AN AID TO EMPOWERMENT - A CAREGIVER WELL-BEING SCALE

To aid medical social workers in the promotion and support of well-being among older family caregivers, a simple, valid, and reliable scale was developed. This scale has two subscales, one that assesses the extent to which a caregiver's basic human needs are being met and one that assesses the extent to which a caregiver can satisfactorily meet his or her predictable activities of daily living. Developed from a model that focuses on a person's strengths, this tool was created to help social work practitioners enable caregivers to become more in touch with their own abilities. Both subscales had high internal reliability and construct validity. This scale may have value in other areas of caregiving. Implications for using this scale in practice are presented.