In the late 1980s, my grandmother started wandering from her home, leaving stove burners on, and occasionally forgetting where she was. My father, my aunts, and I knew it was time to act. The trouble was, my father and his two sisters had been at odds for years. The skills I learned as a social worker and the experience I obtained from working in aging services, enabled me to convene a family meeting and design a plan of care. The goal was to allow my grandmother to remain in her own home for as long as possible.

The plan included coordinating the roles my father and aunts were able to do, such as providing live-in home health care (aunt Mary was a trained aide), grocery shopping, bill management, yard work, and taking grandma to church. I looked into entitlement programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid, as well as community programs, such as meals at a senior center and transportation services. I took grandma to a geriatrician for a thorough check-up, and we consulted with an elder-law attorney about estate planning and updating grandma's will. I also began researching assisted living facilities and nursing homes.

Our plan of care lasted for a couple of years, until my grandmother fell and broke her hip. When she returned home, she was disoriented and harder to care for. We realized it was time for her to move to assisted living. Grandma moved into an appropriate facility we had identified near my father. I again worked with my grandmother and her children to ease them all into accepting this new transition and phase in her care. I repeated the process with nursing homes about a year later, shortly before my grandmother died.

My family was fortunate. My experience and education as a social worker in aging (gerontology) helped coordinate my father and aunts and various community services that enabled my grandmother to stay home for as long as possible. Most other families do not have a gerontological social worker as a relative and may not know the profession exists.

We at the John A. Hartford Foundation would like to change that dynamic by increasing the number of geriatrics-trained social workers. The Foundation is working hard to introduce geriatrics into the curriculums of social work programs across the United States, as well as providing opportunities for social work students to obtain field experience in different settings working with older people. We are also supporting social work faculty interested in becoming experts in gerontology. The Foundation is committed to ensuring that one day all families will have access to a trained gerontological social worker.