Caring for someone with AD can sometimes be difficult, emotionally and physically, especially if you are doing it alone. Sharing the caregiving with others can help relieve some of the stress. Options include:

• Establishing your own personal network of family and friends, if possible
• Looking into adult day care or short-stay residence programs for the person with AD
• Having professional help come into your home (respite care)
• Employing other helpful services such as visiting nurses and/or housekeeping help

As your caregiving network becomes established, what can its members do to help? As with everything else having to do with managing AD, organization is helpful. The following steps are recommended:

1. Create a list of all your concerns — real and imagined.
   
   
2. Using your list of worries as a guide, generate another list of all caregiving tasks with which you could use help.
   
   
3. Next, create a list of everyone who has offered to help, noting their abilities and skills, in addition to temperament.
   
   
4. Match the “volunteers” to tasks based on their skills or availability according to the specific types of help you need. Do not hesitate to offload the tasks you do not like or find exhausting. Someone with a little more emotional distance might be better able to handle some of the personal hygiene tasks. Someone without major family responsibilities might be better suited to do the groceries.
   
   
5. Write out the daily care schedule and necessary details so that other caregivers won’t need to question you. Remember, the point is to relieve your stress, not add to it.