Care Partner Month 2023

The Care Partner Summit brings care partners together to provide resources to make life better for themselves and their loved one with Parkinson’s disease. This year’s Summit will focus on how to communicate through difficult topics and find supportive connections. Join the Parkinson’s Foundation online at-home via Zoom!

Need immediate support? Staffed by nurses, social workers and therapists, the free Helpline is available to answer caregiver questions and concerns. Just call 1-800-473-4636.

The Parkinson’s Foundation Care Partner Program is a series of self-paced online courses designed with care partners in mind.  This course is recommended for anyone caring for someone living with PD, including spouses, partners, parents, children, friends or other family members. They encourage you to use this program in the way that best suits your needs and your schedule. Start with the course that you’re most interested in and progress through the others as you feel you are able.

Parkinson’s Foundation Mindfulness Monday program offers this brief, free course on staying resilience as a care partner.

Download this guidebook from Lonnie Ali, wife of Muhammad Ali. This guide provides information on maintaining friendship, taking care of yourself and more.

Whether you are the spouse, partner, child, parent, sibling, or friend of your person with Parkinson’s, you are an invaluable part of their team. Your role as a care partner will evolve throughout the years, but in each stage, it is essential to equip yourself with tools, advice, strategies, and support to ensure that you and your loved one live well. Davis Phinney Foundation designed a new Every Victory Counts® Manual for Care Partners to give you just that.

Being a care partner to someone with Parkinson disease often involves taking care of the immediate while thinking ahead to the future. In this program, Mindy Bixby, DO, movement disorder specialist, and Amy O’Rourke, certified care manager, will discuss: * symptoms and planning needs care partners can expect at each stage of PD, * ways to proactively manage the most challenging aspects of caregiving, * and how to utilize the Roadmap to Care as a planning tool.

During the Parkinson’s Foundation Care Partner Program: Staying Healthy as a Care Partner, Amy Goyer, AARP’s Family and Caregiving Expert, answered the most common questions about staying healthy while also being a care partner to a person with Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Looking for inspiration? These stories are written by those in the Parkinson’s disease community who are helping bring awareness to this life-changing disease.

Also, find out how to share your story.

Often times as a care partner to someone with Parkinson’s, you need a solution to a problem, but you don’t have hours on end to search for it. That’s what this toolbox from the Davis Phinney Foundation is all about. It includes a few worksheets, a few apps, a few websites and a few nuggets of wisdom from people who have been caring for someone with Parkinson’s for long enough to know how valuable time is. And how time-consuming and emotionally and physically taxing being a care partner can be when you don’t have the formal training or resources you need.

Educating your children about your diagnosis of PD can be challenging. However, the APDA hopes to make this easier with this cartoon.

In this podcast, a care partner relates her journey with her husband, who received a PD diagnosis at age 51. She tells about her initial shock and fears and how she came to terms with the disease, and about their journey together, using information and knowledge to help them deal with changing situations.

Access for a list of Parkinson’s Support Groups and Caregiver Support Groups across Florida.

Join online discussion groups where you can connect with others who are sharing similar experiences to you and your loved one.

Join PMD Alliance and Fixel’s own Ashley Rawls, M.D. for this virtual workshop. This free workshop is your chance to learn from and ask your most pressing questions of a leading expert in the movement disorders community. As an adult child or care partner of someone with a movement disorder, you may feel overwhelmed or uncertain about how to plan for what’s ahead. The experts have practical advice and resources to best support you in your unique needs and concerns.

This program is for care partners and adult children of someone with PD at the newly diagnosed stage. Newly diagnosed is considered 0 – 5 years from diagnosis.

If you could use some extra support as a care partner, please join the Davis Phinney Foundation for our monthly Care Partner Meetup. During these one-hour sessions, Connie Carpenter Phinney and Davis Phinney Foundation Ambassadors and care partners Pat Donahoo and Gail Gitin discuss the concerns, challenges, and questions that many Parkinson’s care partners have today.

Meets the first Tuesday or every month at 2 P.M. EST