Effective strategies for quality care giving involve people knowing how to compassionately respond to their elderly spouse or relative’s condition, says researcher and clinician Steven H. Zarit, who will give this month’s Leon and Josephine Winkelman Lecture at U-M.

Zarit — whose work focuses on mental health problems of older people and their families, as well care giving, dementia and functional competency in late life — says strategies include patience when an elder asks the same question multiple times or researching what assistance can help the older person.

“When families understand this, they can respond in an appropriate way,” says Zarit, professor of human development and head of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Zarit will give the lecture at 2 p.m. Jan. 31 in the School of Social Work’s Educational Conference Center. The lecture — entitled “Family Care in an Aging Society: Issues and Interventions” — is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Zarit will examine patterns of reciprocity of families and will discuss how care of elders emerges from everyday exchanges of support. He also will discuss strategies for assisting families to provide high quality care while controlling physical and emotional costs.

There has been a shift in the nuclear family within the last 50 years. Social and economic change has led to more children in their 20s staying with their parents rather than moving out on their own.

A spouse or parent at the end of life resides in the home rather than relocate to a nursing home or institution. Zarit said more families attempt to care for the older person despite greater time and task demands placed on them. “They may feel that no one will provide quality care as well as them,” he says.

The Winkelman lecture series was established at the School of Social Work by the Winkelman brothers — Stanley, John, Frederick and Henry — as a memorial to their parents.

The lecture series provides a forum for the presentation of new and emerging knowledge from the social sciences and the helping professions in the field of gerontology, and for the discussion of the application of such knowledge to the development of social policy, the organization and management of social welfare services, and the delivery of social work services.