The National Center on Caregiving at Family Caregiver Alliance recently released "Recommendations for Family Caregiving and Long-Term Care Services," a 2010 policy statement for California.  The paper includes background information and a list of recommended actions, which are contained within three policy objectives: (1) Provide adequate funding and support for programs and services that support caregiving families, including restoration of full funding for the Caregiver Resource Center system; (2) Promote caregiver-friendly policies and practices within all practice-settings and public programs in California; and (3) Promote caregiver-friendly employment regulations, including expansion of paid family leave and guaranteed paid sick days for all workers.  The recommendations were presented at the California Working Families Policy Summit February 25, 2010.  For more information, visit:

A February 16, 2010 post to the Health Affairs Blog addressed "Informal Caregiving By and For Older Adults."  Written by Donna Wagner and Emiko Takagi, the blog compared data from the 2009 study on caregivers released by National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP with data from similar studies conducted in 1997 and 2004 to examine trends and key findings for caregivers of persons age 50 and older, with an emphasis on older caregivers.  They report that the percentage of caregivers caring for individuals over 85 years of age has increased across all three surveys and that an increasing number of caregivers over 75 years old are caring for a friend (20%), a parent (20%) or a sibling (18%), as opposed to a spouse.  The burden of care is higher for older caregivers, compared to younger caregivers, and older caregivers are the least likely to have another unpaid person helping them. For more information, visit:

The Commonwealth Fund released a paper on February 17, 2010 by Howard Gleckman of the Urban Institute called Long-Term Care Financing Reform: Lessons from the U.S. and Abroad.  Keeping in mind that Congress is currently considering a voluntary long-term care insurance program as part of health care reform, this paper reviews the experiences of France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and highlights some of the lessons the United States can learn from each.  Most of those nations have embraced universal, government-managed long-term care insurance over the past two decades, while the U.S. has taken only small, mostly ineffective steps to help people access long-term care services.  For more information, visit:

The Health and Aging Policy Fellows Program is now accepting applications for fellowships in its residential and non-residential tracks.  This program has combined with the John Heinz Senate Fellowship in Issues of the Aging to create the joint John Heinz/Health and Aging Policy Fellowship, which allows professionals to participate in the policymaking process on either the Federal or state level as legislative assistants in Congress or as professional staff members in executive agencies or policy organizations.  The non-residential track, which is a partnership with the Healthy Aging Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), allows fellows to work on a policy project and brief placement(s) throughout the year at relevant sites. The application deadline is April 15, 2010.  For more information, visit: