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Established in 1993, the Iowa Respite and Crisis Care Coalition is dedicated to helping caregivers maintain a healthy life balance by providing funding for “short-term breaks.”

“We primarily are set up to provide short breaks for families who are taking care of loved ones with some sort of special needs,” said Doug Cunningham, executive director. “As a caregiver, you get exhausted, depressed and really kind of beat down; you’re isolated and lonely. So we try to just kind of give them some time to take back themselves and regroup.”

Cunningham said a lot of the work the organization does is “behind the scenes,” and a lot of people don’t even know the coalition exists until they are faced with a situation that turns them into a caregiver.

“The thing that’s hard is until people really have a problem or they are caring for someone with special needs, they really don’t know what respite is,” Cunningham said, “and until it actually affects your family and you actually see the effects of it, you don’t really get it, and that is the thing that is hard for us to kind of demonstrate to people.”

Currently, the organization has programs in more than 20 Iowa counties and during 2008 has been able to provide funding to 250 individuals through its respite care services.

Additionally, the group provided funding for 480 children through its Crisis Childcare program, which receives federal money through a grant from Prevent Child Abuse Iowa. Cunningham said the program was extremely helpful during the summer floods in Cedar Rapids and is usually used during times of disaster.

“Families are devastated (during these times); they don’t know what to do,” he said. “So we offer them short-term breaks so that they can place their children in a short-term foster care home, and then they go clean up their life so they don’t have to worry about their children being in danger for that short period of time.”

The coalition also offers online training on its Web site to help people improve their caregiving skills.

“We’re trying to help build the infrastructure of the caregiver work force,” Cunningham said. “There is a lot of work to be done.”