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Contents:
1. Discover "Ask the Caregiving Coach": A New Caregiver Support Service from Author and Coach Margery Pabst and Project Compassion
2. The Heart Prevails Legislation in NC: Personal Tragedies Result in Legislative Change by Tiffany Christensen
3. Learn about Support Teams Currently Inviting Members, Including One in Durham
4. Volunteer to Join a Support Team
5. Register for the Next Support Team Development Conference in September
6. Circles of Care
7. Thank You for a Great Spring Symposium -- Growing Up with Illness: Partnering with the Pediatric Patient
8. Learn How You Can Help Right Now
Articles
1. Discover Ask The Caregiving Coach: A New Caregiver Support Service from Author and Coach Margery Pabst and Project Compassion
 Many caregivers have ongoing questions about their caregiving role and about specific problems, issues and feelings they confront each day.
If you are a caregiver, we are excited to announce you now have a unique opportunity to have your questions answered by Margery Pabst, author of Enrich Your Caregiving Journey, in our new website feature: "Ask the Caregiving Coach."
In this web-based service, Caregiving Coach Margery Pabst will provide specific, doable answers and practical tips to your questions. In addition, you will have the opportunity to engage in discussion and interaction with your fellow caregivers at Project Compassion. This is also an opportunity for you to explore and discuss feelings that arise from being a caregiver.
Our goal is to reach out and be useful to you, especially when an issue is ongoing and you don't know where to turn. Answers and tips, we hope, will often be as close as your computer and on your own time!
Here's how "Ask the Caregiving Coach" will work:
• Write your question(s), 2-3 sentences in length, to the Caregiving Coach at CaregivingCoach@project-compassion.org with just your first name to ensure confidentiality.
• The Caregiving Coach will select questions that she hears most often and that have practical answers caregivers can put into action.
• A file of your questions will be kept, selected every two weeks, and placed in the feature, "Ask the Caregiving Coach".
But we are not stopping there! To promote interaction with your fellow caregivers, we will also:
• Ask for your feedback to the Coach's answers.
• You can agree, disagree or provide additional options for the Coach answers.
“Ask the Caregiving Coach” can be found on Project Compassion’s website under National Initiative. Click here.
If you are with an organization that works with caregivers, you can refer caregivers to this valuable chance to dialogue with a national leader in the caregiving field. Email James Brooks for a press release you can customize for your website, e-news or newsletter.
Caregiving Coach Margery Pabst and Project Compassion both look forward to this feature as an enriching experience for YOU!!!
2. The Heart Prevails Legislation in NC: Personal Tragedies Result in Legislative Change by Tiffany Christensen
(excerpted from Finding Your Voice in the Healthcare Maze)
On May 17th 1999, tragedy struck the Folwell Family. After their 7-year old son, Dalton, was hit by a car as he was boarding a school bus. At the hospital, the grieving parents learned their beloved son was brain dead and were faced with the question of whether or not to donate their own child’s organs. Dale Folwell remembers thinking “Am I really having this conversation?”
Even though he and his wife were advocates of organ donation prior to being asked this question, his wife resisted the idea. Folwell states that donor parents in a trauma situation are often not saying no to donation, “they are saying no to death and it is very difficult to separate the two.” Folwell stood by his wife in the decision to not donate.
 As the Folwells waited for more tests to be performed on Dalton, they sat in the pediatric ward, surrounded by other sick children. Mrs. Folwell looked around and thought: “What if my son was one of those children who needed an organ?” She turned to her husband and said “I’ve changed my mind.” The Folwells ultimately gave permission for Dalton’s organs to be donated.
This was the first time the Folwells had been so directly impacted by donation. Unfortunately, it would not be the last.
Click here to read the rest of the story.
3. Learn about Support Teams Currently Inviting Members, Including One in Durham
Peter and Pam have been married for over 50 years. They have traveled the world together, attended graduate school together, worked alongside one another, and are best friends. Over the years they taught English in Hong Kong, were campus ministers in Philadelphia, and led groups and organizations in discussions around spirituality. When Pam was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Peter knew it would be another long journey they would walk with each other. Peter felt even more alone…
Click here to read more about Peter and Pam’s story…
At Project Compassion we receive many referrals to form Support Teams for people in the community living with illness and caregiving. A few teams are looking to start in Durham, Siler City, Chapel Hill, and Saxapahaw and would benefit from team members. As always with the team approach, team members only do what they enjoy doing when they are able to do it to help as part of a coordinated team effort.
Click here to view our featured teams for the month.
4. Volunteer to Join a Support Team
If you would like to volunteer to be part of a Support Team, the first step is to attend a Support Team member orientation. In the Support Team orientation you gain an understanding of the team approach and how working as a team can increase what individuals are capable of doing.
During the 3 hour orientation we will cover the Support Team model and team approach, walk through ways to provide practical, social, quality of life, and emotional and/or spiritual support, how to set up healthy boundaries and limits, and how to support one another as a team over time.
Member orientations are held monthly, with the next orientation on Monday, June 21, 2010 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM, at the Seymour Senior Center in Chapel Hill. If you would like to attend this orientation click here, or to be notified of future orientations please email Steven Warnock, Support Team Initiative Director, at steven@project-compassion.org or call (919) 402-1844.
5. Register for the Next Support Team Development Conference on September 23-24, 2010.
The Support Team Development Conference is a two day interactive workshop designed to equip volunteer and organizational staff with a complete set of skills to organize, orient and support volunteer caregiving Support Teams. Project Compassion offers this conference in partnership with the national Support Team Network. Participants across the country have used this model successfully to multiply caregiving support.
The first day offers an overview of successful Support Team development. The focus is on understanding the team approach and learning how to organize and orient Support Teams in various settings. The second day focuses on how to connect teams with the persons they will serve and how to grow and sustain teams over time.
Thursday, September 23 and Friday, September 24, 2010, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Hosted by Carolina Meadows Retirement Community, Chapel Hill, NC
Cost for registration to NC residents is $100 for early registration (September 10); $125 if registered after the early-registration deadline. For those living outside of North Carolina, registration is $200. Registration fees include 16 hours of training, all materials, as well as continental breakfast and lunch for two days. Click here to register or email Steven Warnock at steven@project-compassion.org or call (919)402-1844.
6. Connect with Circles of Care
“Thank you for linking me to such a great group of people, I never thought it would be so powerful.” Circles of Care creates support and helps overcome health disparities for African Americans living with illness. It brings ordinary people together to make a powerful impact on somebody’s life. Click here to learn more.
If you would like to become a part of a Circle of Care, click here to learn about volunteer opportunities.
7. Thank You for a Great Spring Symposium -- Growing Up with Illness: Partnering with the Pediatric Patient
 Nearly 75 professionals, parents and community leaders gathered on Friday, May 7 for Project Compassion’s Spring Symposium “Growing Up With Illness: Partnering with the Pediatric Patient.”
The symposium explored key lessons learned in providing care for children and teens, the nature of support in community, the dynamics of “compliance” and self-motivation, advocacy and empowerment and ways to help all of us find meaning and purpose during illness.
Ray Barfield, MD, with Duke Medicine and the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, provided a powerful opening keynote address.
Following the keynote, James Brooks, Project Compassion’s Executive Director, introduced “Supporting Yourself and Others” followed by a panel discussion with parents and professionals. Then Elisabeth Dellon, MD, with the North Carolina Children’s Hospital, provided an introduction to “Fostering Mutual Investments in Care: The Compliance Conundrum,” also followed by a panel. Finally Tiffany Christensen, Project Compassion’s Finding Your Voice Director, introduced “Exploring Advocacy and Empowerment” for our closing panel discussion.
Great thanks to Jane Walters, Curtis Taylor, Jay and Monteen Lerew, Neil Shipman and Andy Ingham for bringing the parent perspective and to Tiffany Christensen for sharing from the former pediatric patient point of view. Thanks to Ray Barfield, Elisabeth Dellon, Lisa Brachman, Tiffany Christensen and James Brooks for bringing the professional perspective.
This event would not have been possible without our sponsoring organizations. Great thanks to:
Sustaining Sponsors
Carol Woods Retirement Community
Carolina Meadows Retirement Community
Chapel of the Cross Episcopal Church
Galloway Ridge at Fearrington
Supporting Sponsor
Duke HomeCare and Hospice
Friend Sponsors
Hospice of Wake County
Ronald McDonald House of Chapel Hill
Individual Sponsors
Tony Galanos
Sandra Jarr
We also thank all of our symposium participants for making the day such a rich and lively learning experience.
We hope to continue bringing children, teens, parents, professionals and community leaders and members together to creating meaningful partnerships with pediatric patients.
8. Learn How You Can Help Right Now
 Project Compassion is a non-profit organization that creates community and provides support for people living with serious illness, caregiving, end of life and grief.
Your tax-deductable gift to Project Compassion funds the resources and support described in our e-news and on our website.
To learn more about Project Compassion, click here.
To learn more about what your gift will do, click here.
You can make a secure gift online by clicking here or by mailing a check made out to "Project Compassion" at:
Project Compassion
180 Providence Road, Suite 1-C
Chapel Hill, NC 27514
Gifts may be made in memory of honor of someone special. All gifts will be acknowledged.
Your will today will make a direct impact in the lives of individuals living with illness, caregiving, end of life and grief.
Thank you for your generous support!
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