Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap V4 Steps 7-10 / Alzheimer’s and Other Dementias
The Caregiver's Journey
This episode of The Caregiver's Journey details steps 7 through 10 of the Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap, specifically focusing on t
Key takeaways
- Caregivers should adopt a mindset of caring for two people: the person with dementia and themselves.
- The 'Savvy Caregiver' course is recommended as a gold standard for dementia caregiving training.
Main topics
- Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap
- Dementia caregiving education
Notable quotes
You're caregiving for two people at this point.
Conclusion
The episode serves as a practical guide for caregivers to build a foun
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) This is the Whole Care Network, helping you tell your story one podcast at a time. Speaker 1 (0:16) Content presented in the following podcast is for information purposes only. Views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the host and guest and may not represent the views and opinions of the Whole Care Network. Always consult with your physician for any medical advice and always consult with your attorney for any legal advice. And thank you for listening to the Whole Care Network. Speaker 2 (0:52) Did your loved one recently get a diagnosis of dementia? Have you gone through the first six steps of the Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap? In this episode, I'm going to cover steps 7 through 10 that Sue and I recommend you take on your 20-step dementia caregiving journey. We're still in the beginning. Speaker 2 (1:16) Welcome. We Speaker 1 (1:17) are Sue Ryan and Nancy Treister. This podcast brings our years of experience in a variety of family caregiving roles to prepare you to navigate your caregiving journey. Speaker 2 (1:27) We're sharing our personal experiences, not medical advice. And because it's our passion to support you on your journey, we believe no topic is off limits. Let's get started. Speaker 2 (1:42) This episode covers step seven through 10 of the 20-step Navigating Dementia Caregiving Roadmap, version four. We first launched the roadmap in August of 2025, and we've been updating it. We updated it based on podcasts that we've published that relate directly to a step in the roadmap, as well as things we've learned from others in the dementia caregiving space. The good news is the most up-to-date version of the roadmap is... always available on our website, thecaregiversjourney.org. On the homepage, there's an icon that says Caregiving Roadmap. Click on that, and it takes you to the page, the roadmap itself. It's interactive. There's 20 steps. You literally click on a step number, and it brings up what we recommend you do in that step and hot links to the resources available in that step. On that same page, the Caregiving Roadmap is also a link to a downloadable digital guide. And it is exactly what's in the interactive web page, but in a guide. And if you use the digital version, the hot links still work. So you can click on a hot link in the digital version. It takes you to that website or that place. Now you can also print it off. A lot of people feel more comfortable with something in their hands. So download the digital guide, print it. If you'd like to have something in front of you. Of course, there's 20 steps in the dementia caregiving roadmap, like I said. So we've divided those steps up based on your stage of dementia caregiving. Now, this is dementia caregiving stage, not the stages of dementia. Speaker 1 (3:27) They're Speaker 2 (3:28) loosely aligned because your caregiving changes as the dementia changes. We're here talking about your stage of dementia caregiving. There's also a self-assessment tool on the caregiving roadmap page that you can click on and answer five questions. And it'll give you a good idea of which stage of caregiving that you're in. Regardless of where you land, we recommend you go back and look at the steps before that stage. So let's say you land in the messy middle. Go look at the in the beginning steps to make sure. you didn't miss anything important to creating your caregiving foundation. Speaker 1 (4:08) And that's really when we talk about steps Speaker 2 (4:09) one through six, those are really the steps that you need to take to create a good solid foundation for caregiving. And a lot of those you take with your loved one side by side. So let's go through quickly what the three stages of dementia caregiving are. This is still in the beginning. So we're going to cover that in a little more detail. But the three stages are in the beginning, which is right after the diagnosis, the messy middle, which is. Later in your journey, when your loved one is struggling with a lot of the activities of daily living, and you're starting to assert more control. They're getting frustrated because they don't know exactly what to do. And you're getting bossy because you're telling them what to do and it can get messy. And then the third stage is later on. And this is really towards the later part of your dementia caregiving journey. And your loved one at this point has relinquished control and you're really managing all aspects of their care. So we're going to focus, as I said, on the in the beginning stage. And in the beginning, we want you to set a solid caregiving foundation. We have a podcast, Podcast 66, takes you through all the stages of dementia caregiving from beginning to end and really talks you through how things unfold and where and how you should think about your caregiving journey as they unfold. Speaker 2 (5:35) In this episode, we're going to talk specifically about in the beginning. In the beginning, as I said, you're setting a lot of the foundation for your caregiving journey. And there's some foundational level things we want you to think about. First, we want you to think that you're not caregiving just for one person. You're caregiving for two people at this point. What do we mean by that? Well, of course, you're caregiving for your person that's living with dementia. But secondly, you can't survive a dementia caregiving. marathon is probably a good description of it because these go on for a very