Putting 'Family' into Family Caregiving - 2023 10 09

 

If we are going to change the face of family caregiving we need to re-conceptualize our understanding of who is on the family caregiving team.

The burden of family caregiving has been defaulting to daughters and now, even granddaughters of our frail elders. We need to build our family caregiving teams to include our sons and grandsons. 

There is no reason for the predominance of caregiving falling onto women's overworked shoulders other than historical and cultural bias. We can only change these conceptions by working at a historical and cultural level to re-set these defaults. We need to re-calibrate our values, assumptions and workload distribution.

As a society, we need to value caregiving as a noble pursuit, that ascribes cultural capital to those who put in the time. We need to dignify the work of caregiving in the family home and make it unthinkable that anyone would leave a single family caregiver in charge of providing care for 300, 400 or 500 hours a month. We need to make our highest value the care and well being of our frail elders at home, that it would be a badge of dishonor to take a vacation without making sure our time share for caregiving had been covered by another family member (not the person doing the majority of the caregiving time). This valuing of caregiving must be specified as a responsibility of all family members, male and female.

As a society, we need to assume that providing a family caregiving setting entails work of all family members, whether they live nearby or some distance away. Geographic proximity cannot be a limiting factor for assuming family caregiving responsibilities. If this means hiring local supports in lieu of physical proximity, that is an option. There are many ways that family living at a distance can contribute to the overall family caregiving mission. Assuming a whole family response to family caregiving responsibility means family functionality, communication, and problem-solving has to be prioritized over individual differences. Family caregiving is a highly demanding mission that draws on family time, energy, finances, and work resources. We need to assume this work is going to be shared across family members rather than fall to one family member to carry out the work.

As a society, we need to understand what constitutes the family caregiving workload. What is the work that needs to be carried out on a day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year basis? What specifically must be done to ensure health, wellness and safety? What needs to be done to enrich the day to day experience of life in a family caregiving home? How is this workload being defined, assigned, carried out and monitored for quality assurance.

We are turning our family homes into extensions of the healthcare system and delivery health services work on behalf of our frail elder family members. Let's make sure we put the highest value on this work. Let's make sure we assume all family members, male and female, share the responsibility for the getting the work done so no single family member is oversubscribed. Let's make sure that we fully understand what it means to provide 24/7 care facility and infrastructure in our homes.

Family caregiving is a serious undertaking. A caregiver error can result in injury or death. Let's make sure we build out our family caregiving teams to ensure a fair distribution of the work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

One hundred percent responsible - 2024 08 27

Image
  There are 168 hours in a week (24 x 7). When you are operating a long-term care bed in your home for a family member who can no longer fend for themselves, your hours of caregiving duty is 168 hours a week. That is 100% of the time. That is why becoming a family caregiver is the same magnitude of change as becoming a new parent. You are responsible for the health and welfare of another human being. When you have respite, say, for 8 hours a week, from Home Support, then your caregiving hours for that week are 160. Overnights count. You are still on call and responsible for the health and welfare of your care recipient. If we were to hire an external caregiver to stay overnight with Mom so we could get a night away, the rate should be budgeted for at least $30/hr. A 10 hour sleepover (if you have 1 hour to get to bed, 8 hours sleep, and 1 hour to get up in the morning), that would cost $300 for that one overnight. Even then, we are responsible and on call. Does anyone have access t...
Read more

Making the best of it

Image
  We didn’t plan to become unpaid family caregivers. Forty-five years ago, as we plotted our careers for early retirement, we didn’t factor in taking care of our 92 year old, mentally ill, developing dementia, end stage COPD, arthritically disabled mother. We may not have had concrete plans at that stage of our lives, and we also did not know what caregiving was, what it meant to be a family caregiver, or what it meant to be an unpaid family caregiver. This is family life. This is the life of a family over decades. This is the end of a long life that waited many years to come home from the mental health group home system. We thought we were prepared for Mom to come home. We tore out the bathtub and installed a no barrier shower. We emptied out our basement suite and set up a new bedroom for Mom and a guest room for unpaid family to come and stay with Mom. We knew that Mom could not be left unattended for any extended length of time. We knew that Mom was too frail to continue living...
Read more

Invisible no more

Image
Mom is learning to use her iPad to have face to face conversations with her children. "I love to hear my children's voices". She is always calm after she spends time with one of her kids. Invisible no more. I am not angry at my Mom. She is aging and losing ground with each passing day. She is aging as gracefully and with as much good humour as she can muster. She works hard to maintain her independence, even as her strength declines, and she copes with more aches and pains. I admire my Mom and I am happy to take care of her. The fact is, though, that I don't have much choice. My Mom is utterly frail and vulnerable. If she was left in the care of an institution, she would not be able to defend herself, or activate necessary services on her own behalf. She would be a dependent of that institution, its policies, its governance, and the ethical and moral values that guide the employees that are paid to provide services to my Mom. My beloved Mother-In-Law was diagnosed wit...
Read more