Our Senior Wish Tree

The winter holiday season can be a joyful and celebratory time of the year. Yet, for many elders and adults with disabilities, this time of year can be especially lonely and depressing. For many years, Buncombe County Health and Human Services has held a special holiday gift drive -- the Senior Wish Tree -- to help meet the needs of our most isolated and vulnerable adults.   

The Department of Aging and Adult Services works with many agency partners to identify individuals who don't have access to a support network to help with their basic needs and are going to go through the holidays alone. Each of these individuals creates a wish list and then community members are invited to select someone they would like to shop for.   

Requests often includes basic items such as food, toilet paper, postage stamps, cleaning supplies, bed linens, towels, slippers, winter caps, gloves and coats, pet food, and gifts cards to Ingles or Walmart. One year a gift requested was for a roll of quarters for the laundromat. Gift requests sometimes also include special items such as a crossword puzzle book, chocolates, or a cookbook.  

Social Work Supervisor, Roxann Sizemore, who coordinates the Senior Wish Tree, writes, “I personally find such enjoyment coordinating this program and look forward to it each year. It not only brings joy to me, but to the agencies who submit names, the people who select names and the recipients of the gifts.”  

She continues, “I remember the first year we had the program we were unsure if the adults would think it was silly or if they would like the gifts. We were so pleased to see the excitement when the gifts were delivered. Some wanted to open their packages immediately, while others were determined to hold on to them during the holiday and open them later. All recipients were surprised that someone cared about them enough to purchase them a special gift.” 

This year’s Senior Wish Tree is electronic and is available here. Please consider selecting an individual (or more!) to shop for. 

Once you sign up, you will receive a confirmation email with additional information, and a reminder email before the drop-off period. Wrapped gifts will be collected at the Buncombe County Health and Human Services building at 40 Coxe Avenue December 8, 9 and 10 between the hours of 8am and 5pm.  

For more questions, or to schedule an alternative drop-off time, please contact Roxann Sizemore at 828-250-5721 or roxann.sizemore@buncombecounty.org 

The Senior Wish Tree has a long track record of success because of our many Age-Friendly partners and the generosity of our Age-Friendly community. Let’s help keep that record going this year. Click here to sign up. 

National Family Caregivers Month

National Family Caregivers Month is celebrated every November. A report recently released by the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers (RCI) found that one in five full-time workers is a caregiver, providing care on a regular basis for a family member or friend who is aging, has a serious illness, or has a disability.  

Caregivers who work experience conflicts between competing responsibilities. Decades of research document the significant emotional, physical, and financial toll caregiving takes.   

One 2016 study found that income-related losses sustained by family caregivers ages 50 and older who leave the workforce to care for a parent are $303,880, on average, in lost income and benefits over a caregiver's lifetime.   

These negative effects have been exacerbated during the COVID-9 pandemic. A report from the University of Pittsburgh shows that caregivers are more likely than non-caregivers to be experiencing social isolation, anxiety and depression, fatigue, sleep disturbance, financial hardship, and food insecurity.  

The RCI report shows that at some point in time over the course of caring for their loved one, 44 percent of family caregivers who are employed full-time said they had to cut back their work to part-time because of their caring responsibilities, and roughly 20 percent said they had to quit working altogether. As a result, a tremendous amount of talent, loyalty, and institutional knowledge leaves the workforce every day - either temporarily or full time.   

Coordinated support services can reduce caregiver depression, anxiety, and stress, and enable them to provide care longer, which avoids or delays the need for costly institutional care. The benefits employed family caregivers report using most or say they would have used if available are benefits not being offered by most employers: 

• Flexible scheduling 
• Remote work or telework 
• Reducing hours from full-time to part-time 
• Job sharing/reduced workload 
• Specialized caregiver services  

The pandemic has upended the ways we work, even if we have not yet arrived at what a post-pandemic workplace will look like. Headlines such as these abound:  "5 Ways COVID-19 has Changed the Workplace;" "COVID Killed the Traditional Workplace;" "The Future of Work After COVID-19."

Perhaps some of the benefits that employed family caregivers most need are to be found within the silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic.