About
The Book...
Caregivers and Personal Assistants… is a comprehensive, indexed, step-by-step reference that teaches help recipients (as well as family caregivers and health care agencies) the time-proven strategies for recruiting, interviewing, hiring, training, managing, and parting from help providers. People who learn these special management skills can better control the quality of help they receive, because they can first control the quality of their help providers. Special chapters also teach family caregivers how to avoid chronic fatigue, and reserve family time and energy for providing love, caring, and support.
The author is the leading authority because of his decades of personal, professional, and academic experience as well as his widespread sharing of management strategies through seminars, courses, and publications. For over 30 years, Alfred H. “Skip” DeGraff, a tetraplegic who uses motorized wheelchair mobility (after a diving injury at age 18), has been dependent each day on help providers. While completing graduate school and pursuing professional careers, he has personally employed over 350 personal assistants (PAs) after interviewing over 1,500 applicants. He has also provided one-on-one counseling to help recipients, family caregivers, and paid providers; taught formal 16-week courses on PA management; hosted magazine columns; and now authored this third, completely revised edition of his reference. In addition to offering his new book, DeGraff invites readers to subscribe to a free e-newsletter at saratoga-publications.com
About
The Author...
Alfred H.
"Skip" DeGraff
Author, Publisher, Publicist, and Wheelchair User
The prominent authority on finding and keeping quality help
providers, as well as preventing and relieving family caregiver
burnout
When Al was 18,
he dove into the ocean and broke his neck. One amazing note
about his active and independent lifestyle is that he continues
to dive in! He personifies carpe diem, because of the way this
mostly paralyzed man seizes each day. It is because much of his
life has been so difficult that the mission of his four
successful careers has been to make the disability lifestyle
easier for others.
When he isn't
writing and publishing, Alfred H. "Skip" DeGraff
travels extensively to provide presentations, lectures, and
seminars, and that is the way he was recently introduced at a
speaking engagement by a close friend.
As people with
disabilities, our independence is ironically dependent on our
getting help from family caregivers and paid help providers. In
appreciation, we look for ways we can return favors. On a
bigger, societal scale, I believe each of us has a social
responsibility of giving back contributions that make life
easier for others with similar hurdles.
Raised in
small-town, upstate New York, he arranged to work on the resort
island of Martha's Vineyard for the transitional summer between
high school graduation and entering college. 1967 included the
Summer of Love for the nation, and the summer of dramatic
lifestyle change for this 18-year old. In mid-morning on the 4th
of July, he dove off an ocean pier into the appearance of a huge
oncoming wave that was deceptively shallow because of low tide.
As his head hit the sandy bottom, his neck snapped and he was
instantly and painlessly paralyzed below the shoulders. That
innocent dive forever changed his life; however, it also began a
new lifestyle of service to his peers with disabilities.
