Your Personalized Support Plan

It is common to feel overwhelmed when you are caring for a loved one whether due to mental or physical illness. Sometimes it is hard to ask for help from those around you. This personalized support plan template is designed to help you organize the tasks in your life and to explore where to go for help.

• Personalized Support Plan MS Word (50 KB)
• Personalized Support Plan Adobe PDF (59 KB)

Start by listing the people in your life whom you would feel comfortable asking for help. This may be someone in your immediate family (ie. your spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling) or it may be a friend or neighbour. Whoever it may be, list their name and contact information in the spaces provided. (If you have more than five, that’s great!). Then, in the table on the bottom of the page list all the tasks that you or those around you currently do in order to run your household, care for your loved one, etc. List the person who currently performs this task and then think of the possible people from your contact list who alternatively might be able to do the task.

Next, fill out on the calendar when these tasks need to be done. Contact the people from your contact list and ask about help with a specific task that their name falls beside. If they can help with a specific task on a specific day, plot them into the calendar.

This exercise may seem like common sense. Its purpose is to get you thinking about spreading the workload and enlisting help whenever possible in order to avoid caregiver burnout.

Let us know what you think! Can we improve this plan?
Drop us a line via email or on our discussion forum.