Sharing The Load

"Urgent need: Mother with cancer, daughter plagued by leaks, mold since Hurricane Irma."

It may be easy to skim by those words on the website of the American Association of Caregiving Youth (AACY), a nonprofit in Boca Raton. But when you realize the daughter referred to in the alert is her mother's caregiver - one of about 1.4 million children nationwide between the ages of 8 and 18 in similar situations - it's almost impossible to ignore.

No one needed to tell AACY founder and director Connie Siskowski about the challenges and seemingly insurmountable needs of that population. Yes, she has the raw data, the statistics and academic research that shine a light on the issues. But she has firsthand knowledge that few other - if any - academic researchers or caregivers do: Siskowski spent two years as a youth caregiver herself.

"I lived with my grandparents and cared for my grandfather when I was 11 until his death when I was 13," says Siskowski, who lived in Nutley, New Jersey, at the time. "That experience and my grandfather are always with me."

She knows that, in addition to caregiving, such youth often also handle grocery shopping, food preparation, laundry, home maintenance, medical appointments and other adult tasks.

That experience motivated Siskowski to make a difference for caregiving children. She started by volunteering in medical facilities while still in high school and earned various degrees, including one as a registered nurse as well as a doctorate in educational leadership. She then founded AACY in 1998.

"First, we had to identify the kids that were caregivers and develop an eligibility process," she says, noting that one in three of the approximately 12,000 middle- and high-school students in the county are caregivers. "Once we did that, we developed skill-building courses for those in sixth grade right through high school."

Staff and volunteers work together to determine strategies to resolve stressful issues for youth caregivers, such as lack of technology and transportation. Support programs offered by AACY, which has affiliates throughout the nation, include sleep-away camps and school-based lunch-and-learn seminars.

"We have a long way to go to help these caregivers," Siskowski says. "But we've seen some amazing transformations." O

For more information, call 561-391-7401 or visit aacy.org.