The aging of the prison population presents corrections staff with unique challenges in knowing how to support inmates while maintaining security. This article describes a 2-day training program to introduce the aging process to select staff at all levels. While the results of a pre-posttest measure, using a modified version of Palmore's Facts on Aging Quiz, did not produce a statistically significant difference at the conclusion of the training, attendees did express satisfaction with the training and their newfound insight into the challenges faced by aging inmates. They also offered recommendations for future training to include more practical suggestions for the work environment.

This study examined end-of-life planning and whether common characteristics predicted completion of these decisions. Participants in the Nebraska End-of-Life Survey were asked whether they had heard about or completed five plans: a health care power of attorney agreement, a living will, a last will and testament, funeral or burial preplanning, and organ and tissue donation. Logistic regression was used to identify predictors of these outcomes. Predictors of completing end-of-life plans, including funeral and burial preplanning, included older age, higher household income, and higher religiosity. This suggests that all of these decisions may be part of an integrated planning process at the end of life. Further, results from this study indicate that the role of religiosity, found in this study to predict both financial and health care planning, warrants further exploration.

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Educating college students about death and dying can be a difficult task when their experiences have been limited to trivial encounters through television and movies. The use ofa book such as Tuesdays with Morrie (Albom, 1997) in a course on death and dying offers both college age traditional and older non-traditional students an opportunity to become acquainted with the dying process and to confront contemporary issues such as the September 11th tragedy in a non-threatening manner. This article describes the method in which this book has been incorporated into a death and dying course, a sampling of questions used with a class project and an overview of the adjustments made since its inception as a required reading.

Because a substantial portion of care provided to persons with Alzheimer's disease comes from families, it is beneficial to understand what services are most useful to caregivers in supporting a family member in the community. This article summarizes a project designed to explore the benefits of consumer-directed services, in which 112 caregivers were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group at intake. Results suggest that caregivers who take a consumer-directed (self-determined) path have a greater likelihood of extending their caregiving role than those who have access to traditional aging services only. Encouraging consumer-directed behavior is discussed as an avenue for social service providers to pursue when supporting caregivers and care receivers in remaining in the community.