To help family caregivers and the professional community that works with families, the AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection has gathered hundreds of resources on the widest range of issues. Keys topics include:

Medical conditions, such as Alzheimer's Disease, stroke, Parkinson's disease, etc.
Hand-on skills for caregivers
Legal and financial information
Coping with caregiving
Community resources

and over twenty other major topics.

Among the types of resources we have gathered, you will find:

Books, many of which can be bought over the Web at Amazon.com
Video tapes
Websites that you can access with a single mouse click
Pamphlets and magazines
Fact sheets and checklists
Links to national organizations that can provide additional resources

Check back frequently! New resources are being reviewed all the time.

Each entry in the AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection has been reviewed and rated for its quality, usefulness to family members, timeliness and accessibility. The resources are rated on a scale from 4 stars (the best) to 1 star. Our reviews are prepared by experts in family caregiving and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each item.

We also provide information about the cost of the item and where it can be obtained. In the case of books, if these are sold online at Amazon.com, there is direct link to the specific book on their site so you can make an online purchase or read other reviews.

We also offer a special feature that will let users add their own ratings and reviews of resources they may have used. Other visitors to the AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection can benefit from the perspective of others like you.

The AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection offers two ways to search our database.

Search by Topic: You can select one of more than twenty major topics and many more subtopics to search by. If your computer supports Java, these topics will be displayed in a tree-like structure with major topics shown. To view subtopics, click on the plus (+) sign in front of the major topic and expand the tree. Click on the topic name to retrieve the list of resources that match that topic. If you don't have Java enabled on your computer, you will see a pull-down list of major topics, with subtopics indented under them. Select and topic and click the Search button.

Search by Keyword: If you are looking for a specific resource by name or by author, or something more specific that the list of topics offers, try a keyword search. Just enter the term or name into the field provided and click on the search button. A keyword search is likely to return far fewer results, so if you don't find what you're looking for, try a topic search.

In the future, we will be offering ways to refine your search by limiting it to only books, only websites or other specific types of resources.

If you are an author, producer or organization that provides some type of resource you'd like to see listed in the AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection, we would like to see your product. Make sure it falls within the types of resources we carry and that it meets the following criteria:

• Is of practical use to caregivers or to professionals who work with family caregivers. (In general, we are not reviewing articles describing the results of scientific or sociological research.).
• Is available, either for purchase, for free or on the Web. We don't include out-of-print materials.

Send one copy of your product to Kate Panepinto, American Society on Aging, 833 Market Street, Suite 511, San Francisco, CA 94103. If you have questions about the AXA Foundation Family Care Resource Connection, you can contact the National Alliance for Caregiving at (301) 718-8444.