Joyce Beckett - Lifting Our Voices

Joyce O. Beckett

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS New York

Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu

Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
E-ISBN 978-0-231-51195-7

Library of Congress Cata loging-in-Publication Data Lifting our voices : the journeys into family caregiving of professional social workers / [edited by] Joyce O. Beckett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-14060-7 (cloth : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-14061-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)ISBN 978-0-231-51195-7 (electronic)

1. Social workersUnited StatesBiography. 2. Social workersUnited States Case studies. 3. CaregiversFamily relationshipsUnited States. I. Beckett, Joyce
Octavia, 1945 II. Title.
HV40.3.L49 2008
361.3092273dc22
2008020306

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When we cast our bread (words) upon the waters,
We can presume that someone downstream
Whose face we may never know
Will benefit from our action.

Maya Angelou

1 Caregiving
Joyce O. Beckett

2 Once, Twice, Always a Caregiver: Career Caregiving for Parents Who Abused Alcohol
Cynthia Jones

3 Responding to My Sisters Addiction: Fostering Resilience in My Nieces
Darlene Grant

4 Caring for My Grandmother: The Birth of a Gerontological Social Worker
Erica Edwards

5 Not an Option but a Duty: Caring for My Mother
Yvonne Haynes

6 My Last Born Shall Care for Me and Mine: Caring for Siblings and Mother
Joyce E. Everett

7 Caring for My Mother: Four Phases of Caregiving
Shirley Bryant

8 Aunt Doriss Moves
F. Ellen Netting

9 Closing Muriels House: Caring for My Mother
King E. Davis

10 Social Worker Husband as Caregiver of Social Worker Wife
Samuel Peterson

11 What Goes Around Comes Around: Career Caregiving in the Caring Village
Joyce O. Beckett

Almost forty years ago, when I was an Army social worker, a social work technician who worked for me often raised a rhetorical question after a particularly difficult day of hearing the sad and true situations of soldiers engaged in combat and combat support operations: Who treats the treaters? More simply put, the questions was, We take care of and confront the emotional pain of everyone who comes into this clinic; who helps us? There are no easy answers as to who treats the treaters, but this book will go a long way in moving professional helpers closer to understanding the dynamics of caregiving and ways to achieve the best caregiving results. In their own voices, professional social workers and social work educators tell poignant stories of the responsibility of caregiving to their loved ones. The caregiving role knows neither gender nor race. Each caregiver voice tells a story of preparation by the loved one for this service. The now-vulnerable loved ones taught them lessons of sensitivity and caring during the socialization process and in the building of those relationships. In these relationships, as care was given and received, old difficulties between the caregiver and the cared-for relative were resolved, and new connections between them were made as the caregivers strove valiantly to acknowledge and respect old roles and the meaning of these roles to each of them while having to address changes in their respective roles. It is of note that these caregivers worked to make sure that their loved ones maintained as much autonomy as possible and that their loved ones were actively engaged in decision making about their care. All caregivers were aggressive in their advocacy efforts to ensure the ongoing respect by healthcare and service providers to their loved ones. In a straightforward way, the authors acknowledge the costs incurred to themselves and significant others in having to provide the kind of care that was needed. Each social worker and caregiver highlights the importance of a network of friends and family, creative caregiver coaches, and professional healthcare providers.

Race, ethnicity, and familial relationships notwithstanding, each of these social workers recounts the physical and emotional fatigue and social isolation brought about by the caregiver role. Yet each speaks about the joy and triumph he or she experienced in the caretaker role. Among those joys and triumphs were the strength they derived from their loved ones as those cared for tried to ease the burden through humor, expressions of reciprocal care, and genuine love and gratitude for the efforts being made so that they might live their lives in dignity and as adults.

Through the life stories, the book does a remarkable job of pointing out the value of educating professional social workers to assume and use the roles of broker, mediator, manager, and advocate to improve systems of care. These professionals played all these roles in providing care to their loved ones. They describe how they were strengthened through contacts with their individual family members and friends and with the friends and caring networks of their afflicted relatives. The authors recount the strategies they used for successful caregiving and the various ways they maintained a sense of personal integrity and inner peace as they strove to make the lives of their loved ones less chaotic, more manageable, and as fulfilling as possible.

It becomes apparent as one reads each of these stories that by recording their stories, the tellers impart valuable solace to those of us who are now or have been caregivers. Although turmoil and toil were essential elements of each authors experiences, they remained tenacious and courageous in their struggles to make sense of senseless service systems, incongruous insurance arrangements, unresponsive and poorly situated systems of care, and sometimes unresponsive family members. Each author portrays the caregiving experience as having made them more sensitive and more caring people and perhaps better social workers. Who treats the treaters? In some way the answer is different for each of these social workers, but support resided in the knowledge they had acquired as professionals about systems and system change, in the networks of care that existed for them or that they helped to create, in friends and family, and in the loved ones receiving care. Clearly, treatment inheres in the quality of relationships the caregiver has and is developing. The reading of these stories gives new meaning to the reality that weeping lasts for the night, but joy comes in the morning. Although the morning for each caregiver was different, it came when the pieces to the puzzle of caring for their loved ones eventually came together.