Caregiving

Although owners of a mobile home park have informed Shirley Lewis that her 39-year-old son has to move because he is too young to live there, she contends that the real reason is that he has AIDS. "Most people out there are planning their Thanksgiving dinners right now," Lewis, 61, said Tuesday. "We're planning how we're going to stay together." Lewis said Huntington Shorecliffs Mobile Home Park sent a notice last weekend reminding her that park rules require that all residents be at least 55.

Once when Audrey Clurfeld was in line to catch a plane, she ducked out to call her 37-year-old retarded brother, Joey. Nothing could keep her from the Sunday afternoon ritual. "That phone call means so much," explains Clurfeld, of Redondo Beach. "My family and I are all he has." Dr. Edward Ritvo, a UCLA professor of child psychiatry, says this caring attitude is typical of adults with a developmentally disabled brother or sister.

The broken rib could have been a disaster for Claire Soroko. She had been saying goodbye to friends Christmas Day when she stumbled from an outdoor step and banged into an iron handrail, breaking a bone in her chest. Afterward, she couldn't clean, drive or even dress herself. "I really don't have anyone," says Soroko, a Park La Brea resident in her 70s. "My daughter and son-in-law are very busy. I couldn't ask them to come and stay with me."

A scarcity of paid caregivers means that, in the future, older people may have to band together to help each other. Older Americans are already pitching in to care for their more frail or even older counterparts as either paid or volunteer workers. That's because finding younger people to work as caregivers is becoming more difficult.

More than a year after the death of rapper Kanye West's mother, state officials are investigating her nephew, a registered nurse who oversaw her recuperation after her plastic surgery, according to a person with knowledge of the probe. Stephan Scoggins, who received his nursing license in 1990 and has an advanced degree in public health, was in charge of caring for Donda West when she returned home Nov. 9, 2007, after a 5 1/2 -hour operation.

Each morning Frances Chavis sneaks out of her house for 6 a.m. prayer, hoping to get back before her husband wakes up. Chavis, whose husband Lemuel, 72, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2003, spends her days as a "shadow" -- watching over her husband and the house, making sure everything is done correctly -- and, when she can, she naps. And every morning, after about two hours in church in the Crenshaw area, she returns to her home with the motivation and strength to go on.

Mothers, not only do you have your own day this Sunday, you also are the primary beneficiaries of a growing body of laws and court rulings that grant workplace protections to caregivers. California is among several states and cities that are passing or considering legislation banning job discrimination against workers with the responsibility of caring for children, aging parents or ill spouses.

The California Senate voted Thursday to bar employers from denying promotions or raises to workers who juggle job duties with the demands of caring for children, sick spouses or aging parents. One of the first such efforts in the country, the measure would add "familial status" to the categories of discrimination banned by the state's Fair Employment and Housing Act.

LISA WOOD describes herself as a woman in the middle -- a daughter and mother struggling to nurture one new life and, with equal tenderness, attend another on a fitful journey to its end. At 44, she cares for a 5-year-old daughter and a once fiercely independent mother with early Alzheimer's disease, who at times can be as demanding and exasperating as her child. The result, says the Sunland resident, is a life lived on a hamster wheel of constant motion and little progress.

Yolanda Spencer is eternally grateful for the weekly visits from fellow members of the Bethel AME Church. Without them, she's not sure how she would have survived the eight years since her husband, Vincent, now 62, fell off a ladder and became a quadriplegic. An accident such as Vincent's "is such a devastating thing to happen to a family," Yolanda said. The Spencers' relatives live far away, but, she said, members from the Jamaica Plain, Mass., church have been "really, really supportive."