Caregiving is both rewarding and challenging. It's important to ask for the help and break that you and the individual living with dementia need. When friends and family ask what they can do to help, accept their offer.

By doing this you will be building your care team. It can be difficult to coordinate helpers in a way that meets your needs and the needs of the person with dementia.

A resource such as a care team calendar is a personalized online tool to organize family and friends who want to help with caregiving. This makes it easy to share activities and information with your care team. You can post items for which assistance is needed and care team members, can sign up for specific tasks.

Following are several free, online care calendar resources that families can use to build their care teams, share tasks and coordinate helpers:

It's important to also involve family members who live at a distance. They may help arrange appointments, manage finances and visit to have time with the person with dementia, and give primary caregivers a break.

From your care team calendar, friends and family can access ALZConnected message boards, post announcements and share information.