- Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm Stephen Henderson, your host.

Today, we are looking at caregiving in the African-American community.

It is part of our Black Church in Detroit series, which is produced in partnership with the Ecumenical Theological Seminary and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History.

A new initiative called 100 Caring Congregations is creating caregiving ministries in the city's Black churches.

Now the program trains faith leaders and church members on how to help families prepare for roles as caregivers.

Joining me now is the project's director, Dr.

Marilyn French Hubbard.

Welcome back to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you so much, Stephen.

- And it's great to see you.

So as we were talking about before the interview, this is something that we all come to in our lives.

We all will need to be cared for at some point.

And before that, I feel like now it's true that we will all be called on to care for someone.

And once you get to be of a certain age, it's your turn, right?

It's your turn to play one of those roles.

Talk about the challenges that we have though, specifically in the African American community, preparing people for both of those roles.

- Yeah, you know, many of us have these idiosyncrasies or fears that if we talk about, you know, growing older, if we talk about getting ill, that it may come to pass.

So, you know, just overcoming the fears, the stereotypes, the old ways of thinking to get people to really recognize that we all are aging.

And also on the other side of that, to recognize that just because we're aging doesn't mean that we're gonna get old and sick, you know.

And so one of the things that has been a continued challenge for us is to get people to really value their lives and to know that they have some control over planning and preparing and preventing crisis.

And so just to get people to talk about it.

- Yeah, I mean that discussion about it is the thing that I think is the most critical part of it.

Because once you start talking about it, all of the things that you need to do I think become more evident.

And I think for a lot of us, that is a difficult conversation, and that's why we kind of put it off.

But once you get there, it's a little bit easier to at least get your mind around what you're facing.

- And there's so many layers, you know, and every day brings a different challenge.

And none of us are trained to be caregivers.

We just get that phone call that somebody's sick or we make the phone call that something is happening to us.

And so one of the things that we're doing in the project, once we have really gotten people ready to talk about it, the awareness, the education, we're now looking at the practical things that you have to know about in addition to the activities of daily living.

But you know, what is my insurance like?

What does Medicare take care of?

How do I prepare for Medicaid?

What's the eligibility?

What do my finances look like?

And so we've developed a structure that helps people to know the right questions to ask.

And in our program, one of the beauties of the program is that we get the caregivers to take care of themselves first.

And that we learn that if you learn how to ask these questions for yourself, you have a listening ear to help other people.

And you can kind of, you know, observe some things, you know, just by listening and observing.

You know, dementia, and people are not having the correct information.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about the congregation caregiving, the project that you're doing, how it works and what it adds, I guess, to this conversation.

- Well the church has been the perfect place to do this.

We are supported by the Ralph C. Wilson Junior Foundation who had an initiative and funds to support family caregivers within congregations.

And as we have gotten deeper into the fabric of the congregations, it's just a great place to be because we have people with the hearts, the spirits, and the minds to serve.

But in most congregations, there was no structured approach to address the needs of the caregiver.

We're so focused on the person that we're providing care for that we don't think about the caregiver.

So one of the things about the church, we have the long history of serving, long history of caring.

It just has mushroomed now into kind of a movement.

So once we have mobilized, you know, we've mobilized almost 50 Black pastors and their churches, and they understand the plight and the people in the church, you know, that's who they are, they serve.

And so we're developing all kinds of programs.

So the program provides the structure, our training, but the churches, on the individual local levels, they provide the programming to meet their needs.

- I would also imagine that in addition to the programming, just introducing this kind of discussion and awareness in the church builds on the community of the church.

And then that gets leveraged in favor of these challenges as well.

So just the idea of that church community understanding that everybody is facing the same things.

- Yeah, it really helps to build capacity.

We made the conscious decision to work with congregations and communities.

So you already have a group of people there, and we work with teams, and then they work with teams within their church.

So it builds capacity.

And one of the things about the program is that we wanna develop vetted resources.

So when you become unknowledgeable about some things and you need to know where the resources are, instead of picking up a book that has national resources, we want you to be able to pick up the books that have the resources in your community.

So we're helping the church to even go within their community to find out who does what.

And it may be a caregiver's having a plumbing problem, you know, who are the plumbers in the church?

And so it goes much beyond just the medical care.

If you need a ramp to get them in, who's the carpenter?

- Who does that?

- And knowing that before you need it.

- Yeah, let's talk more about caregivers and the things that they need.

I feel like that of course is dependent on circumstances, but over time, I feel like the needs inevitably grow and change and the ability to maintain that level of care for whoever it is you're caring for becomes harder.

- Right, well one of the big things that comes up all the time is respite.

The caregivers need respite, - They need breaks.

- And they need trusted people to relieve them, because when you're leaving your home, you know, you're leaving your home as well as your loved one.

And so there's always safety.

And so we're hoping through the program that we'll be able to, through congregational families, if you will, that we can help to build capacity where there may be somebody in the church who can come over and provide respite for you, and then you're not so concerned about the safety of your home.

So respite is a big area, and then resources.

And the one resource that comes up over and over is caregivers.

Who can do this?

Where do I find them?

Who has the beliefs that we have?

So we're hoping that within these communities, that we'll continue to transform the current situation into a ecosystem of care where just within our communities that are natural to us that we can go to get support for respite as well as family caregiving.

- Yeah, I'm also struck by the potential connections between congregations on this.

And it's not that the congregations in town are not connected anyway, there's lots of back and forth, but I would imagine this is a different kind of- - Well yeah, what we did was we built community.

So we have a virtual community, so we have over a hundred people who have already graduated our program.

So they're all in a virtual community.

And again, all of those people learn how to get up on technology, to be able to go online and to be able to key in, this is what I have to offer and this is what I need.

And so as the community grows, the resource base grows, and the churches found out that they have common needs.

Grief is a big area that so many churches have to deal with.

And so there's a program that deals with grief that's already out there, that they're sharing that.

And so it's really become a collaborative, we call that co-creation.

That we're all co-creating, you know, a system that's gonna care for our people.

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean of course the hope here is to raise awareness.

If you had to sort of put your finger on the hope for changed outcomes, what would that look like?

- It would be conversations.

Being able have conversations.

So we're in the church, but many family members are unchurched.

And so what we wanna do is to be able to have the conversation and to get people to fill out the basic things that they need.

And one of the basic things that they need is an advanced directive.

So if something happened, you know, somebody else has the ability to obtain the information and to provide support.

And so what we're hoping is that the basic needs are met so there can be communications with other people within the family or within the church family have all the vital information that they need so you can be cared for if the need arises.

So the right documents, the right conversations.

- Right, right.

Okay, great to have you here.

But congratulations on the work, this is such a stark need in our community.

- It's a pleasure.

Thank you so much.