Older Adult and Family Research and Resource Center

Welcome! You’ve reached the official website of The Older Adult and Family Center, or OAFC. For the past 15 years, our mission has been to improve the health and well-being of those caring for a family member with memory loss or dementia, and to serve the ethnically diverse communities of Northern California.

What’s a Caregiver?
When we refer to caregivers, we are referring to those that provide frequent (sometimes daily) unpaid help to older relatives with significant memory loss due to problems such as Alzheimer’s disease or related disorders (e.g., strokes, Parkinson’s disease, etc.) who are living in the community. Some have estimated that on any given day nationwide, caregivers provide help to literally millions of disabled older adults. As caregivers and care recipients grow in number, more is being learned about what it means to care for a sick or impaired relative, family member, or friend. Although we have offered our services to people involved in many different forms of caregiving, the OAFC takes a particular interest in those caring for family members with memory problems. We understand that disorders like dementia can be challenging to any family member involved, and that many caregivers are significantly frustrated, depressed, and anxious about their role. Our programs are free & are offered at home or at convenient community locations.

What Services Do We Provide?
To address the sometimes disabling problems that caregivers face, we’ve developed methods of skills training to help caregivers reduce their stress, develop effective problem-solving skills, and thus improve their quality of life. Our programs teach a variety of different skills for coping with the strains of caregiving, including: how to relax and stay calm in difficult caregiving situations; how to manage your own feelings of depression or pessimism about the future; and how to better manage some of the most distressing or troublesome problem behaviors that your loved one engages in at home.

Whom Do We Serve?
We understand that caregiving is an issue that cuts across ethnic and cultural lines. So, we have designed out research and service programs to be flexible and to meet the needs of diverse groups. For example, we have one specialized program that is only for Latino/Hispanic and Caucasian/Anglo women family caregivers that is conducted in small groups in locations throughout our service area, which ranges from San Francisco to Salinas (including the East Bay). We also offer a unique, home-based program to women family caregivers of Chinese background. This program can be provided in either Mandarin or Cantonese. In addition, we have a different home-based program that is available to BOTH MEN AND WOMEN caregivers who are African-American, Latino/Hispanic, or Caucasian.

In the future we will be expanding our program to include other ethnic and linguistic groups as funding and staff become available. These are novel programs that have been developed with substantial input from the different ethnic, racial, and cultural communities that we serve.

For more information about our services, or to volunteer for one of our many current research projects, please feel free to call us toll free at:
(800) 943-4333.

If you are a professional service provider to those with memory loss, dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease and want to speak to the OAC Director, you can contact Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, Ph.D., ABPP, at:
(650) 617-2774.