Healthcare for the Caregivers

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

Healthcare for the Caregivers

The LGBTQ Caregiver Center, an initiative of the new nonprofit, Caregiver Wellness Collective Inc., provides resources, education, and services to empower LGBTQ Caregivers and those who care for LGBTQ people to improve their health and well-being.

By Fred W. Wright Jr.

FROM TOP: JENNIFER HENIUS; ZANDER KEIG

In the vast universe of healthcare, one question consistently arises: who will take care of the caregivers? The people who are tasked, often unexpectedly, with caring for a loved one frequently need support and resources on short notice. In the LGBTQ community, fortunately, a new eff ort, launched last year, has begun to provide these very resources – thanks to two Florida social workers who bring professional skills and personal experience to the problem.

Jennifer Henius, who lives in the Tampa Bay area, and Zander Keig, in Orlando, found each other on LinkedIn. Both are experienced LCSW healthcare professionals. They found they had been on similar journeys in their personal lives of caregiving. Both had fathers who were military veterans; both had fathers who developed dementia and needed home care as their children tried to maintain their careers.

The initiative started last year when Henius looked for a virtual, online program aimed at improving caregiver health and wellness based (resource). “I launched an initiative under my nonprofit aimed at supporting LGBTQ caregivers and raising awareness of their unique needs and challenges with a social work colleague Zander Keig,” said Henius.

Henius’ role of supporting LGBTQ veterans and their caregivers started early. As a grad student, she worked with Bay Pines veterans “who often were afraid to come out to their healthcare providers.” For the next 30 years, Henius perfected her skills and passion for working with LGBTQ caregivers, first for 20 years with the Department of Veterans Aff airs at Bay Pines and then 10 more working at the VA Central Off ice in Washington, D.C.

“I am really passionate about caregiver support, social justice and health equity. LGBTQ caregivers and those who care for LGBTQ people are often overlooked in the broader caregiver community and they lack culturally competent services,” Henius observed.

“That said, they are also more diverse than non-LGBTQ caregivers as they tend to be younger and more racially diverse with high intensity caregiving responsibilities and stress. Most are also working full-time while trying to care for someone.”

Keig, 56, is a first-generation American of Mexican heritage (Latino) and a post-transition transsexual man. He is also a U.S. Coast Guard veteran. His outreach includes several books and a documentary, Zanderology. The titles (all available on Amazon.com), include “Manning Up: Transsexual Men on Finding Brotherhood, Family, and Themselves,” which explores 27 men who underwent gender transition talk on their responsibilities as dads, sons, brothers, husbands, partners, friends, and mentors in the male community.

Nonfiction hasn't seen such thorough and empathetic examinations of manhood, masculinity, and masculine embodiment since Max Wolf Valerio's The Testosterone Files and Jamison Green's "Becoming a Visible Man," and never in a book with such a diversity of voices. The diversity of the contributors' cultural, social class, racial, spiritual, and generational backgrounds is astounding. Their writings include a variety of subjects, such as giving birth and raising children, homosexual male sexuality, overcoming racism, and finding comfort in firmly held religious convictions. A number of well-known authors, including Valerio, Aaron Devor (author of FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society), and Ryan Sallans, have contributed (author of Second Son), according to the summary on Amazon.

Keig also was contributing co-editor for two other LGBTQ-focused works:

“Letters for my Brothers,” an anthology of essays “from esteemed transmentors who impart the knowledge they wish they had at the start of their journey,,” according to Amazon, and “Manifest: Transitional Wisdom on Male Privilege,” a "diverse collection of writings about male privilege from a transmale per- spective. Evocative, provocative and informative, this book provides a new lens to explore feminism, gender and transgender advocacy.”

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LGBTQ CAREGIVER CENTER

The serendipitous connection that both social workers found online was symbolic of what thousands of caregivers are experiencing each day. “I was trying to find someone to help with paperwork,” Keig recalled, when his father was diagnosed. “I was looking for sources for aging LGBTQ caregivers.”

Once linked through social media, the two launched the LGBTQ Caregivers website to provide such resources and networking for others while using the website to also “off er self-care, wellness (and) resources like breathing exercises and meditation.” The website, a virtual center rather than a brick-and-mortar venue, allows visitors to connect “with academes doing research on LGBTQ caregivers for partners and parents with dementia and Alzheimer’s. We’re connecting with caregivers with cancer,” Keig explained.

“What we want to do is create a virtual hub where people can find resources and activities and connect with other people who are also caregivers. I’m an only child. When my father developed dementia, it was me. I was the family,” Keig said. “It fell on me to provide care for him in my home and, ultimately, to find diff erent levels of care in the community.

“It takes a lot of energy, if you’re working in a caregiving kind of industry and on top of that have a parent or partner at home also needing caregiving. It’s pretty exhausting.”

Keig added: “I was able to connect with caregiver support early on. I was very proactive in finding support for myself because I knew what I needed.”

This very process helped Keig and Henius to shape the LGBTQ Caregivers website – to off er a quick and much easier path to resources and networking for the LGBTQ community.

“We’re creating a resource directory that is going to provide people with local and virtual networks,” Keig said. “For example, several diff erent organizations around the country have caregiver support networks. No sense in us inventing something; these things exist — where they are and how to find them. The Red Cross has a whole network for caregivers of vets. We just make sure people know about them."

This is obviously not a problem unique to the LGBTQ community. “Many of the stressors, challenges and demands caregivers face are universal, but in the LGBTQ community, some people may have strained relationships with their families of origin and are not able to rely on them for care and support as they age and become less independent,” Henius said. “Some people are providing care for someone in their social network or ‘family of choice’ and are not always recognized as a family caregiver or care partner and may experience diff iculty with access to services, let alone culturally competent services and resources that meet their needs.”

TO LEARN MORE about LGBTQ Caregiver Center, visit lgbtqcaregivers.org, Facebook: lgbtqcaregivers