Executive Summary
This report presents findings from an analysis of public comments solicited by the Administraion for Community Living (ACL) on the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers, published on September 21, 2022. The Strategy was the culmination of several years of collaborative work by advisory councils established by the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act and the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (SGRG) Act, work that involved hundreds of organizations and individuals contributing their time and energy. The outcome of all of this activity was a clearly articulated set of goals and outcomes.
Although the publication of the National Strategy was an important step, more work was needed. The Councils needed public feedback on the Strategy, to ensure buy-in; to check that that they were on track; and to obtain guidance on how to focus their work as they move forward.
Thus, public comments were solicited: on October 1, 2022, a call for public comments on the Strategy was opened and widely publicized, closing on December 31, 2022. To collect responses, a semi-structured questionnaire was used to ask respondents about their views on the top priorities for the Councils, what was missing from the National Strategy, and any other issues they considered relevant to the Strategy.
Introduction
While publication of the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers on September 21, 2022 marked a historic event, the critical work had only just begun. The National Strategy included multiple recommendations and agency- and sector-specific proposed actions, representing hundreds of hours of collaborative work by the advisory councils established by the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support, and Engage (RAISE) Family Caregivers Act and the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren (SGRG) Act. The recommendations for action incorporated extensive input from family caregivers, the care recipients they support, and a wide variety of stakeholder organizations in both the public and private sectors. However, the National Strategy was designed to be a dynamic and evolving blueprint for change in the lives of family caregivers and the organizations that serve them
While every effort was made to obtain the broadest input from family caregivers and organizations at every level while the National Strategy was being developed, the RAISE Advisory Councils sought to both receive feedback on the Strategy itself and ensure continual input and improvement. To do so, it solicited a round of public comments on the newly-issued National Strategy shortly after its publication. On October 1, 2022, a call for public comments on the published Strategy was issued and widely disseminated. Comments were submitted over the three month period ending December 31, 2022, using a semi-structured questionnaire.