Interview with Ann Cason - On the Art and Science of Quality Caregiving

Now retired, Ann Cason has spent most of her adult life cultivating, refining, and writing about the art and science of caring for the elderly and the ailing.  Her book Circles of Care is generally accepted as the benchmark for how to provide at-home care for an elder,  but at the time of publication (2001) was still considered somewhat revolutionary.  

Ann’s involvement with the elderly was an accident. Suffering from a hallucination, (not all that uncommon in the go-go 1970's), Ann’s psychiatrist told her “I don’t think you need Psychiatry, I think what you need is a path” and introduced her to Alan Watts. From there, she made her way to Boulder, CO, then a hotbed of spirituality, where she met Chogyam Trungpa and learned to meditate.  While in Boulder, Ann started working with a friend, providing elderly women with care at their homes, a radical idea at the time, thus avoiding the move into a nursing home.

They created an around-the-clock care program for their clients, which led to them starting a business even though both were complete novices in the business world. They called the startup Dana Homecare – “Dana” being a Sanskrit word translated as “generosity”. Ironically, they soon realized that it was “ the elders in our care who were being so generous to let us into their worlds”.  Within a year, they had forty clients and soon expanded to Chicago and Boston.

Fast forward many years and Ann’s company is reborn as Circles of Care, based on the principle of creating completely coordinated care with the client in the middle surrounded by all the various roles of that person’s world. Ann brings her mindfulness and awareness practice to bear in this work writing that “you can’t just go in and look at someone… it could be as simple as asking where I should put my coat, or asking if you like tea and can I make you a cup of tea?  This soup-to-nuts approach of care included family members, caregivers, health care workers, the maid, and even the veterinarian.  As Ann says, “That was our task, to meet and take care of each other, and meet the mail carrier and all the people in that old person’s world, so that there was a little world around the elder”. 

We also talk about death and dying, where Ann feels that “expertise” is one of the worst things you can have when working with those who are dying.  Thoughts we hold about death and the actual experience of dying are often very different.  But we also discuss the very practical details of preparing for death - the power of attorney, the listing of assets and their location, etc.
 
 Finally, we discuss probably the most important element of all, bringing a sense of worthiness to the forefront of care. Ann has used situations, exercises, workshops, and other educational materials to let the persons in her care discover their own worth and self-esteem.   

Since she is now retired, the best way to reach Ann is: [email protected]

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