Faith plays a central role in the lives of many African Americans. To address the needs of African American caregivers, AgeOptions, the Area Agency on Aging for the suburban Chicago region, developed Caring Together, Living Better (CTLB). The project is a partnership of faith-based and community organizations that works to improve supports for caregivers in 12 primarily low income, African American communities in Chicago’s south suburbs. Caring Together, Living Better was one of 14 collaborations in nine states funded by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation’s Family and Informal Caregiver Support Program to demonstrate ways to meet the needs of informal caregivers in innovative and replicable ways. The program builds on caregiver support services already provided through the National Family Caregiver Support Program in the Older Americans Act by connecting to caregivers to these services through faith related activities and through the faith community.



Caring Together, Living Better has served over 250 caregivers and resulted in statistically significant improvements in self-efficacy and caregivers’ feeling of having the help they need. We recently received a $125,000 grant from the Russell and Josephine Kott Memorial Charitable Trust to replicate this success in the west suburbs of Chicago with both African-American and Latino caregivers.



Participants in this webinar will learn how to leverage the role of the church to outreach and provide services to African American caregivers and how to sustain selected activities after grant funding ends.