This article is based on the nine part special, “Aging in America: Perspectives from Psychological Science” published in May/June 2016 by American Psychologist
In the senior living industry, we see this term pop up almost everywhere, but who exactly qualifies as a “caregiver,” and just what is it that caregivers do? There’s neither a simple nor singular answer to these questions, and we spend so much time talking about and caring for our loved ones. Caregivers, it’s time we talk about you.
Who Are Caregivers?
The AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC) define caregiving by four basic characteristics:
- The work is unpaid.
- The care recipient is an adult (over 18 years of age)
- The caregiver has a prior relationship to the care recipient, or in other words, the caregiver and recipient have a history (usually familial).
- The services provided relate to personal need due to the presence of an illness or a disability of some sort.
The 2015 AARP/NAC Caregiving Survey (the most recent of its kind since 1997) calculated that 34.2 million American adults provided care to an adult 50+ in 2015, a number that correlates to about 14.3% of the US population.
Of these over 34.2 million, 85% are relatives of the person receiving care, 60% are female, and the average age of a caregiver, including adult children and spousal caregivers is 49.2 years old. About 62% of caregivers live with the loved one receiving care, and invest an average of more than 21 hours per week to their work as caregiver.
What do Caregivers Do?
Caregivers assist with a wide variety of tasks and responsibilities that relate to functional or health responsibilities and can fluctuate as a loved one’s condition changes. These services can include anything from helping a loved one with personal needs, chores, and finances to arranging for outside services, regular doctor’s visits, and general check-ins. Among these tasks, one of the most important is providing emotional and instrumental support.
Emotional caregiving is often provided inter-generationally across lifespans and, according to University of Colorado Professor Honn Qualls, is an essential aspect of caregiving. In fact, Dr. Qualls writes that emotional caregiving is so important, it can help predict a loved one’s well being. This is especially significant because care recipients often feel isolated from the family and their former life by their disability. They turn to their caregivers to supplement emotional support, relying heavily on caregivers to arrange social engagements or provide transportation of all sorts.
Loved ones also rely on the history they share with caregivers for, what Qualls describes as, supporting “continuity of self”. The transition a loved one undergoes when becoming more dependent or adjusting to life with a form of disability is enormous. Consequently, care recipients lean on family members and familial caregivers to preserve a wider sense of themselves, holding onto their identity as “mom” or “wife” instead of just “patient” or “disabled”. This is especially true for loved ones with cognitive difficulties.
Other responsibilities include partnering a loved one with formal care, such as Independent Living, Assisted Living or Memory Care, and transferring critical health information from one center to another. This crucial aspect of caregiving can, unfortunately, be the most challenging. In her work, Professor Qualls criticizes the lack of continuity between centers, staffing, complex service delivery systems, and families’ overall mapless experience when pairing a loved one with the best care. This is why Integrated and user-friendly technology platforms like LivingPath can transform the senior living industry for caregivers and loved ones alike.
Who Are the Care Recipients?
Care recipients are the parents, spouses, loved ones, or even friends to whom caregivers dedicate their time. Most care recipients depend upon a caregiver because their functional abilities are impaired in some way. Many of these disabilities are physical, such as arthritis, heart disease or diabetes, but others are cognitive disabilities that result from dementia or stroke.
According to the same 2015 AARP/NAC survey, the average age of a care recipient is roughly 69 years old, though 47% of care recipients are over the age of 74, and mostly female. The vast majority of care recipients are family members but many are friends or non-relatives.
