East Texas Alzheimers Alliance

Project lifesaver international the project lifesaver program combines radio technology with rescue teams from the local community, including law enforcement and public safety officials, as a means of expediting the search and rescue for a wandering diagnosed individual. In this program, the client wears a personalized wristband that emits a tracking signal. When a caregiver notifies law enforcement officials that a client is missing, a search and rescue team responds to the wanderer's area and begins searching with the mobile locator tracking system. This process reduces search times from hours and days to only minutes. The project was implemented in gregg, harrison, and marion counties in 2019 and 2020; and upshur and panola counties were added in april and august of 2021. We added rusk county in 2022. Etaa currently manages an average of 25-30 active clients per month with some becoming inactive due to death or becoming bed bound and new clients being added. Executive director attended project lifesaver conference in august 2024 and is now a certified pls instructor and has trained camp county sheriff's deputies on basic search and as instructors, meaning they can now train others in camp county to search for wanderers, as well.

Respite services the organization funded respite care to provide caregivers with an opportunity for rest and temporary relief from primary caregiving responsibilities. We continued in 2021 and the need grew in 2022 and even more in 2023 we contract with 5 agencies; budget has increased from 15,000 to now 20,000; helping 60+ families each budget year. Since 2019, we have awarded 48,739.92 in in-home respite grants, 32,002.35 in institutional respite grants, totaling 80,742.27. Due to funding, we have temporarily suspended our 20-40 of in-home respite grants until we receive additional funds.