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USA Today
3 days ago
- Health
- USA Today
Millions of caregivers have access to this help line. Still, they're drowning.
Millions of caregivers have access to this help line. Still, they're drowning. Show Caption Hide Caption Bradley Cooper new documentary sheds light on caregiving crisis A new documentary, "Caregiving," executive produced by Oscar-nominated actor Bradley Cooper, will explore the hidden struggles of caregivers. unbranded - Entertainment Jami Chapple feels stuck. At 54, the single mother has no income and is two months behind on rent. She's behind on her utility bills, too, and can't find work because she's busy caring for and homeschooling her 12-year-old son who is autistic and has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. 'It's so draining that there's no way to financially produce," Chapple, who lives in Wyoming, said. "Even if you want to.' The last time Chapple felt this stuck was around 2005. She was raising four children then and needed help finding food and clothes for her family, so she dialed the 211 helpline, a national program run by United Way Worldwide that connects callers to local experts who can refer them to health and social service organizations in their community. 'That lady took so much time, with such patience," Chapple said of the 211 call taker. "She gave me dozens and dozens of resources.' Chapple called 211 this time, too. But she said she wasn't eligible for the services the helpline referred her to, and the caregiver support group they connected her with is too far from her home. The 211 helpline is expanding services for caregivers like Chapple. But with 53 million caregivers in the U.S., according to a 2020 report by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, it's not nearly enough − especially if the services 211 refers callers to start to dwindle, said Bob Stephen, vice president of health security programming at AARP. Life for caregivers might get even harder if the Senate passes President Donald Trump's so-called "big beautiful bill" which includes massive cuts to Medicaid. The proposal includes work requirements for people under 65 to access Medicaid, "many of whom would be family caregivers," said Nancy LeaMond, AARP's executive vice president and chief advocacy and engagement officer. In 2021, in partnership with AARP, 211 met the caregiving crisis by adding a Caregiver Support Program in a handful of states including Florida, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Wisconsin. The program grew in the years that followed, and now millions more caregivers will have access to caregiver-specific support assistance as the program is being expanded to 10 more states: Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Missouri and Illinois, plus Puerto Rico. The full list of participating states and regions can be found here. His sick wife asked him to kill her. Now that she's gone, he says the loneliness is worse. Specialists help with callers' most immediate needs like food and shelter, and then get them connected to other programs that specialize in long-term support. There are about 5,000 211 phone workers nationwide, said Heather Black, vice president of 211 System Strategy at United Way Worldwide. "We're the triage," Black said. But what happens when the triage isn't enough? 211 helps caregivers who don't know they are caregivers Since 2021, the 211 Caregiver Support Program has helped more than 1 million caregivers through a combination of direct support, local community engagement and website visits, according to United Way Worldwide. Caregivers often say they didn't know they were a caregiver at the time, including celebrity caregivers like Bradley Cooper and Uzo Aduba. So when 211 specialists speak with people in need, Stephen said, they don't ask the obvious question, "Are you a caregiver?" 'Tuna breath' and death: Bradley Cooper shares memories of caring for his late father Instead, call takers are trained to listen for cues that indicate the person is a caregiver. 'It's amazing how much information people share as they tell you their story about their situation," Black said. 'You don't use the word caregiver until you've got them recognizing some of the tasks that they do," Stephen said, like driving older parents to medical appointments. Callers might ask about food, housing or utility assistance, which were the most common requests out of the nearly 17 million 211 helpline calls last year. If the caller indicates they may be a caregiver, then there are a slew of other resources 211 workers can direct them to, like transportation services, veterans' benefits, respite care, meal delivery programs and caregiver support groups. Evidently, though, some well-meaning attempts to connect people with programs are falling flat. And that may only get worse if funding cuts rattle the caregiving community's resources. Survey: The caregiving crisis is real. USA TODAY wants to hear from you about how to solve it. More help is needed, caregivers and advocates say The 211 helpline is designed to connect people to resources already in their community. But if the resources people need aren't available in that region, there's not much 211 can do, Stephen said. Chapple said 211 was helpful when she was raising her four older children back in the early 2000s, when she lived in Texas. But now that she's in Wyoming and raising a kid with a neurodevelopmental disorder, she's hitting roadblocks. Some of the referrals she got recently through 211, Chapple said, she was not eligible for. "There's not a lot of resources for my situation," Chapple said. Chapple said she doesn't have family support like other caregivers. And she's had a hard time finding a job that offers the flexibility she needs to care for her son. Her biggest needs now, she said, are rent assistance and help finding work. But she said some programs require more time to apply than caregivers have. 'There is an immense amount of time wasted for caregivers on forms," Chapple said. "Filling out forms, phone calls, research, paperwork, interviews with the health agencies and even just the emotional preparation to do those things is sometimes distressing.' The 211 helpline doesn't rely on federal funding, Stephen said, 'although the federal budget does fund many of the things that 211 connects people to.' He's worried federal cuts could further reduce the programs available for people in need, including caregivers. '211 is going to be more critical," Stephen said. "Because people aren't going to really understand what is still there." Caregiving is a labor of love, Chapple said. But it's difficult physically, mentally, financially and emotionally. She said she's had to give up a lot of the simple pleasures she used to enjoy, like taking a relaxing bath or writing songs. Sometimes, she said, she sits in her car for just 10 minutes to listen to music. That brings her some peace. 'There's no time for us," Chapple said. "There's no time for self-care. I mean, I'm lucky if I get like a shower or two a week.' Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal Ventures and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input. Reach Madeline at memitchell@ and @maddiemitch_ on X.
BBC News
18-04-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Charity to create Middlesbrough spinal injury centre garden
A charity has unveiled plans to create a garden space for patients with spinal injuries, to help aid their Garden are set to begin work on an outdoor area and garden room at the James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, for the use of those patients in the hospital's specialist department who typically need lengthy team hopes to develop "beautiful spaces" to help improve patients' physical and mental health as they is the charity's ninth project, with founder Dr Olivia Chapple OBE highlighting the incredible impact previous projects have had on patients' psychological recovery. National charity Horatio's Garden said they had raised more than two-thirds of the £1.4m they need to create the outdoor space at the Middlesbrough hospital, and expect to start building next January - with the garden projected to open to patients in Autumn of the courtyard area will include the addition of a water feature and garden room, as well as a greenhouse where patients will be able to grow plants. According to the charity, people with spinal injuries typically spend between three and nine months in hospital, and are 56% more likely to experience mental health problems, with the risk of suicide increasing fourfold. Dr Chapple cited the tough psychological battle often experienced by people with spinal cord injuries to find something that "gives them hope" following life-changing said many such patients struggled to find "a reason to look to the future with positivity", especially when they were recuperating on a public ward, sometimes with little privacy,"It's incredible the impact of these type of projects, getting involved with gardens - whether that's sitting in them, whether that's being in nature, whether that's having quiet conversations or gardening."It has a huge impact on patients, not only their physical rehabilitation but their psychological recovery as well." Nicola Wilson MBE spent five months in the north-east spinal centre, following a fall at Badminton Horse Trials in May 2022 which left her initially paralysed from the neck down and unable to feel who now acts as an ambassador for the charity, said the redeveloped outdoor space will make an enormous difference to patients, their families and staff,"You're in a ward with six other people; those blue curtains don't offer you any privacy, so to be able to come out into the garden, just enjoy the flowers, the birds, [to] have that quiet time, is just invaluable." Follow BBC Tees on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Miami Herald
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
Joan Vassos says she and Chock Chapple are living their best lives not living together
After choosing each other to be their second acts, 'Golden Bachelorette' Joan Vassos and her fiancé, Chock Chapple, have decided to not live together. At least for now. While Vassos has her life in Maryland, Chapple has his in Kansas. Due to neither one wanting to uproot their respective families, the couple has chosen to split their time between each place, while also looking for a home in New York City. And while the situation has worked for them so far, in a new interview with Parade, Vassos, 62, says she is aware of the naysayers. 'Everybody looks at this like .... 'There's no way this can work because you're not together every minute,'' Vassos told Parade. 'We don't feel the same way about it,' she continued. 'We feel like we both have pretty rich lives in our 60s. You find somebody [at that time of life], chances are they have stuff going on. They have family or they have jobs or they have friend groups, or they have hobbies. So you might not need to spend every waking moment together or you might not need to live in the same city, and that's how we feel right now about it,' Vassos explained. Instead of uprooting their lives, Vassos and Chapple, 61, have made the effort to immerse themselves into each others' lives. When there is 'something fun happening' in either Maryland or Kansas, Vassos and Chapple travel to be with each other. 'He had a party at his country club on Friday night. We had a blast. I loved being there,' she explained to Parade. 'We're not living with each other, but we're kind of living our best lives,' Vassos explained. 'We get to travel and do all the fun things and be together for those, and then the mundane things of, like, me babysitting my grandkids and him going to work — he's kind of doing it by himself, which I don't need to be there [for], and he certainly doesn't want to be here with me babysitting my grandkids or taking my mom to the doctor or whatever.' And as for when Vassos and Chapple plan to say 'I do,' Vassos told Parade that they aren't in a rush, but they also won't be engaged 'forever.' 'I wanna marry Chock,' she said, but admitted that their 'journey is a little weird. ... We are doing the dating process backwards, so I feel like we have a little time of just like, we're having fun dating and not having a million things we have to do.' When the time is right, Vassos said she and Chapple will celebrate their love with an intimate ceremony. 'We don't need this big extravagant thing that you do when you're younger.'
National Geographic
27-02-2025
- General
- National Geographic
The ancient origins of ‘manifesting'—and why it's making a comeback
Before vision boards and TikTok affirmations, ancient cultures also believed that the power of thought could reshape their reality. Can your thoughts shape your reality? Millions of people today believe they can—thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of manifesting, a self-development practice that promises to turn desires into reality through focused intention. But this idea isn't new. Long before TikTok trends and self-help bestsellers, ancient civilizations from India to Egypt built entire belief systems around the power of thought. Here's how those age-old ideas evolved—and why they're making a comeback today. The ancient origins of manifesting The idea that thoughts can shape reality has deep roots in ancient spiritual traditions. Hinduism, one of the world's oldest religions, is built on the concepts of karma—the belief that actions and intentions influence future outcomes—and the law of attraction, which mirrors modern manifestation ideas. According to Christopher Key Chapple, an Indic and comparative theology professor at Loyola Marymount University, 'the law of attraction is rehashed karma theory.' References to manifestation-like principles appear as early as the Rigveda, a 3,500-year-old Sanskrit text containing hymns that suggest thoughts and actions influence personal destiny. (What are the ancient origins of your zodiac sign?) Chapple adds that in later Hindu traditions, 'the idea is that if you want money, you think about Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth; if you want to enhance your overall well-being and luck you participate in Ganesh Puja, (a Hindu prayer ceremony that is performed for good luck and to remove obstacles),' and so on. In the Vedic period, sacrifices were performed for self-benefit, much like modern manifesting, which is conducted primarily for self-gain. But 'later traditions, starting with the Dharma-shastra of around 500 B.C., emphasized the larger goals of service to society through the performance of Dharma and a quest for spiritual freedom', says Chapple. Beyond India, ancient Greece and Egypt also embraced manifestation-like concepts. Ancient Greek and Egyptian beliefs also echo today's manifestation ideas. George Lizos, author of Ancient Manifestation Secrets, points to three concepts that refer directly to manifestation from ancient Greece and Egypt: Hermeticism, the Greek Magical Papyri, and theology. 'The reason Hermeticism is connected to manifestation is because the hermetics talk about the seven universal laws of creation', Lizos says, which includes the law of vibration, widely known now as the law of attraction. 'We can see that the seven laws of the universe are very well connected to manifestation. They just didn't call it manifestation.' (Paganism is on the rise—here's where to discover its traditions.) The Greek Magical Papyri, dating from the 100s B.C. to the A.D. 400s, is the name given to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt. 'They were used by magicians, by priests, by mystics for the direct purpose of influencing reality, and therefore manifesting,' Lizos says. 'It covers everything from manifesting love, to prosperity, success, protection, and divine communication.' Ancient Greek Orphic hymns also included an invocation, like a prayer for manifestation, at the end of each hymn, while written wishes on lead tablets—buried to bring desires to life—mirror today's vision boards. Similarly, theology in Greek religion and Neoplatonism involved rituals to summon divine forces for guidance and support. 'Essentially it was an ancient form of manifestation by specifically working with the gods and goddesses,' Lizos says. The 19th-century movement that shaped modern manifesting The modern concept of manifesting can be traced back to the New Thought Movement of the late 19th century. This spiritual movement emerged in the United States but drew direct influence from Hindu philosophy. 'The original version of Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, one of the founders of the New Thought Movement, liberally quoted the Upanishads (ancient Sanskrit texts),' Chapple says. He adds that Transcendentalists such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Amos Bronson Alcott, who in turn later influenced William James and Alfred North Whitehead, also studied and quoted the Bhagavad Gita and other Hindu texts. (We're in Mercury retrograde. Here's what that really means.) New Thought philosophy promoted the belief that illness could be healed through the power of positive thinking, an idea championed by Phineas Quimby. He believed that those who were thinking more positively about their outcomes were more likely to heal—an early precursor to today's manifestation teachings. Though the movement faded in prominence, its core concepts endured, resurfacing in various self-help and spiritual traditions. Modern manifesting's meteoric rise Manifesting saw a major resurgence in the early 2000s, largely driven by Rhonda Byrne's 2006 bestseller The Secret, which sold over 30 million copies. Celebrity endorsements—from figures like Oprah Winfrey, who credits the practice with shaping her success—helped solidify its mainstream appeal. But it's been in the last five years that manifesting's truly gained renewed popularity. The COVID-19 pandemic fueled a renewed interest in self-improvement, with people turning to positive thinking to regain control over their lives. In fact, Google searches for 'manifesting' increased by over 600 percent during the first few months of 2020. Social media has also had an effect, particularly among younger generations. Today, TikTok alone hosts over 110 million posts on the subject, and in 2024, the Cambridge Dictionary named 'manifesting' its Word of the Year. Manifestation expert and author of Manifest, Roxie Nafousi, thinks the renewed rise in interest has a lot to do with the world post-pandemic but also our evolving wish to look after ourselves more. 'I think that post pandemic, and in a time of economic and political uncertainty, manifesting gives people a sense of hope and agency over their lives,' she says. 'I think that we are also in a time where people are so much more open to self-development and wellness.'
Associated Press
21-02-2025
- Associated Press
Apple drops encryption feature for UK users after government reportedly demanded backdoor access
LONDON (AP) — Apple said Friday it will stop offering an advanced data security option for British users after the government reportedly demanded that the company provide backdoor access for any data those users have stored in the cloud. The iPhone maker said its Advanced Data Protection encryption feature is no longer available for new users in the United Kingdom and will eventually be disabled for existing users. Advanced Data Protection, which Apple started rolling out at the end of 2022, is an opt-in feature that protects iCloud files, photos, notes and other data with end-to-end encryption when they're stored in the cloud. British security officials demanded in a secret order that the U.S. tech giant create so-called backdoor access so that they could view fully encrypted material, The Washington Post reported earlier this month, citing anonymous sources. Apple 'can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection' in the U.K., the company said in a statement. 'We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy,' Apple said, without referring to the government demand. The Washington Post report said the British government served Apple with what's known as a 'technical capability notice' ordering it to provide the access under a sweeping law called the Investigatory Powers Act of 2016, which has been dubbed the snoopers' charter. The law officially gives British spies the ability to hack into devices and harvest vast amounts of bulk online data, much of it from outside the U.K. It contains provisions to compel companies to remove encryption to allow for electronic eavesdropping, while making it a criminal offense to reveal that the government has issued such demands. 'We do not comment on operational matters, including for example confirming or denying the existence of any such notices,' the U.K. Home Office said in a brief statement. Apple did not reveal how many users in Britain have been using Advanced Data Protection. It said the feature would still be available to users in the rest of the world. Some types of data will still be end-to-end encrypted in the U.K. by default, Apple said, including passwords on the iCloud Keychain, information on the Health app, and communications on services including iMessage and FaceTime. End-to-end encryption means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can't be unscrambled without the key. The episode illustrates 'one of the fundamental flaws in government efforts to undermine encryption,' said Mike Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business. Faced with having to choose between security and complying with government regulations, companies like Apple tend to remove security features entirely, said Chapple, a former computer scientist at the National Security Agency. 'The net effect is reduced security for everyone. If other governments follow the UK's lead, we risk a future where strong encryption is functionally outlawed, which puts all of us at risk not just to government surveillance but also to eavesdropping by other bad actors.'
