Time for Living and Caring (TLC): A Virtual Coach to Maximize the Benefit of Respite Time Use

Prior research demonstrated that caregivers who used respite to do what they had most desired, needed, or had planned to do had the highest satisfaction with their time-use and reported the most positive wellbeing over time. Dr. Rebecca Utz, University of Utah, described the development of an intervention, Time for Living and Caring (TLC), designed to maximize the benefit of caregivers’ respite time. TLC, as originally conceptualized, relied on trained facilitators delivering as many as 15-20 visits or phone calls to ensure fidelity. To overcome challenges for sustainability and implementation, the TLC intervention has now been translated into a self-administered, web-based platform to make it more scalable for real world application. Dr. Utz described the new TLC intervention that will be evaluated with a clinical trial supported by the National Institute on Aging.