The Practical Caregiver's Essential Guide: How to Help Someone You Love

This guide will help you to better understand your loved one’s need for care and how you can effectively provide it, while still maintaining your own good health.There are three important rules for good family care:1. Love is never enough. You can love someone utterly and completely, but without the right tools and education, you can fail as a caregiver.2. You have to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of your loved one. If you fail, there will be two people who need a caregiver -- you and your loved one.3. What you don't know or understand can hurt you and your loved one -- when you learn about what ails your loved one, you can also learn about what will make care better.

Sara M. Barton, who trained as an educator, interacted with hospitalized children during her first teaching practicum in the pediatric department of a large city hospital, gaining insight into the value of play therapy and socialization during medical treatment. With minors in art and psychology, she later worked with adult patients in a psychiatric admissions hospital and disturbed adolescents in residential care. These experiences were invaluable when caring for her mother over more than a decade. She created the Practical Caregiver Guides website and Practical Caregiver blogs to help family caregivers.