Tell Us What We Need to Know!
We want your help to understand what research topics are important for families who provide caregiving assistance and support to relatives and loved ones.

Families provide important support to children, adults, and older adults with a wide range of disabilities and support needs. The support that families give is broad and can include emotional support, personal assistance, transportation, and educational or occupational advocacy. Family members who provide care and assistance often do not have the resources and support they need for this.

FS Need to Know is a national initiative, conducted in both English and Spanish, to gather family support research questions and topic ideas. We want you to tell us what questions and topics about family support need better answers.

The research topics and questions that you suggest as part of FS Need to Know will hep create a national strategic plan for family support research in the U.S. We will use your insights to create a plan to research these issues and to help inform family support policies, programs, and services. In particular, we welcome responses from individuals with disabilities, family caregivers, siblings, family advocacy organizations, service providers, and researchers.

What are we asking you to do?

Describe at least one topic that you think family support researchers should explore further. Explain why you think this topic is important.

Things to think about as you respond:

• practical issues with providing support to family members who need assistance
• physical, financial, spiritual, and emotional aspects of providing family support
• information you wish national and local decision makers or healthcare/social service providers know about family support.

We hope to generate a list of important research topics and questions to include in the strategic research plan. Thank you for your willingness to participate!

How to Submit Your Idea

To post or comment, please register for the site using the Register button in the upper right corner. Complete the registration form, and you'll receive a confirmation email. After confirming your email and creating a password, you're free to post, comment, and vote. On future visits to the site, you can enter by clicking log in.

To submit an idea, please click the Submit New Idea button at the top of the navigation sidebar. You will then be asked to add a title for the new idea. You will also have the option to add tags to the idea. To vote on an idea, simply click the up or down arrows to the right of the idea title/description. And to add a comment, click in the box below the idea.

If you would like to see all ideas created with a specific tag, you can click on the word or phrase via the tagcloud in the navigation sidebar area under "What we're discussing". To return to this page, click the All Ideas link.

For Questions & Help:

If you have problems registering or posting comments, contact dialogue@easterseals.com. For questions and comments about the Need to Know project, call (844) 781-4158.

The FS Need to Know Dialogue is co-hosted by the Family Support Research and Training Center and Easter Seals, Inc. FS Need to Know is a project in the Family Support Research and Training Center (FSRTC) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. FSRTC is funded by a grant from the Department of Education, NIDRR grant H133B140046.