Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Gives $7.9 Million Gift To UAMS Schmieding Program

The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation on Tuesday handed out a $7.9 million grant to support the the Schmieding Home Caregiver Training Program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) over the next five years.

The grant will support operations for Schmieding’s seven training sites around Arkansas, which provide education and skills training to family members and paid caregivers caring for older adults in the home, allowing older adults to have choices about their own care.

“The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation’s support has been critically important to the success of the UAMS Schmieding Home Caregiver Program,” said Jeanne Wei, M.D., Ph.D., executive director of the Institute on Aging. “We are grateful to the foundation for this grant and for their continuing visionary support of all our programs, and thank them for their continued support of the training program.”

The training program was inspired by Lawrence H. Schmieding, who 20 years ago struggled to find competent, compassionate home care for an older brother with dementia. In 1998, the Schmieding Foundation donated $15 million to UAMS to establish and support the Schmieding Center for Senior Health and Education in Springdale, which developed the curriculum and training program.

After its initial success in Springdale, a $2.9 million grant from the Reynolds Foundation in 2009 to the Arkansas Aging Initiative, a program of the UAMS Institute on Aging, helped replicate the Schmieding Caregiver Training program in Jonesboro, Pine Bluff, West Memphis and Texarkana in its first phase. A phase II grant of $7.7 million in 2012 from the Reynolds Foundation sustained the initial programs and added four more sites in Fort Smith, Little Rock, Hot Springs and El Dorado.

Robin McAtee, Ph.D., has led development of this initiative since the beginning of Phase I and will continue to do so. One of the largest private foundation grants UAMS has received this year, this final grant brings the Reynolds Foundation’s total giving to the Schmieding program to more than $18.5 million.

With this most recent grant, the foundation will have given $97.5 million to UAMS, with $94.3 million of that going to the UAMS Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, which includes the caregiver training program. This makes the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation one of the largest donors in UAMS history.