USA: Website Aims To Help Caretakers Of Aging Parents

LOS ANGELES (Reuters Life!), November 20, 2007: Adults with aging parents have a new resource for advice and information - a Web site unveiled on Monday for people who provide care for elderly relatives. Backed by $6 million in venture and tested by 2,000 users, Caring.com targets the roughly 34 million adults providing personal aid, financial assistance, or both, to an older family member. "When I was caring for my mom during her unsuccessful battle with lung cancer last year, I found a lot of information about the disease on the Web, but nothing about all the other things I needed to figure out how to help her with her daily living activities, finances, and legal affairs," said Andy Cohen, chief executive and co-founder of Caring.com. The Web site covers everything from what to ask when a parent receives a cancer or Alzheimer's disease diagnosis, how to assess driving skills, information on financial, housing and end-of-life issues, to tips for dealing with a difficult sibling. It uses the latest technology which allows users to assign a rating to articles, which are then ranked according to usefulness. While the site aims to be a one-stop-shop for information, Cohen and his collaborators said the site is also a community for caregivers - mostly 'baby boomers' born between 1946 and 1964 -- who can feel overwhelmed by responsibility and isolated from friends. The site's advisory board includes Dr. Peter Pompei, director of geriatrics at the Stanford School of Medicine, Andy Scharlach, Kleiner Professor of Aging at the University of California at Berkeley and David Solie, author of "How to Say It to Seniors." Cohen estimated that if 10 percent of U.S. caregivers use the site, which gets revenue from advertising, the business could be valued at $100 million annually. And the market should only grow as the baby boomer generation ages, by 2020 the number of Americans over the age of 65 is expected to hit 53 million. "It can seem like a depressing topic, but it can be enormously satisfying if you do it right," said Jim Scott, the site's editor-in-chief, who last year lost his wife to cancer. By Lisa Baertlein © Reuters 2007