Valuing Family Caregiving - 2023 09 06

 


It is very difficult to put a value on something that is not measured, traceable or accountable. That is the situation with family caregiving. The entire economy and healthcare system is depending on family caregiving infrastructure for their continued existence. One of the key arguments supporting such drastic shift in healthcare infrastructure from institutional caregiving to family caregiving is that "it costs less". However, there is no actual cost accounting research that backs up this assertion. 

The work of family caregiving is unknown. We have circumstantial evidence of the negative impact of family caregiving on the health and well being of the families who provide caregiving beds and services in their family homes. We also have financial calculations showing the proportion of caregiving that is being carried out in family homes in relation to commensurate care infrastructure in institutional settings. We do not have any quantitative time / material studies that show how much work is being done in any family caregiving setting. We also do not have any comparison between the work carried out in family caregiving settings in relation to similar work carried out in institutional caregiving settings.

It doesn't matter how much effort we put into training caregivers or encouraging health providers to acknowledge the role family caregivers are playing in the medical care of their family members who can no longer fend for themselves.

If we don't have any evidence based data on the actual work that is being done in family caregiving homes we are not going to have a baseline of information to identify specific family caregiving needs, nor the resources to flow to family caregiving that would ease the burden of care currently shouldered in family caregiving homes.

At present we do not have an evidence based value proposition to argue for system change or to rationalize the flow of resources to family caregiving infrastructure.

This is the change we need to see and it would not be too late if we could get a research program started tomorrow.

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