Everyone is anxious about their future life and tries to prepare for it. One of them is the issue of aging. As the population ages rapidly, a serious problem is emerging in families. It is the issue of caring for elderly family members. Even now, there are people lying down who need care in every other house. Those who are currently doing caregiving work and those who are healthy without any pain now will someday become objects of care. That is what makes people anxious about the future. The government is also approaching this from a welfare perspective to solve this and is actually raising the level of elderly welfare. However, this does not solve the problems of every family. There are surprisingly many people who are struggling and fighting with caregiving work in the welfare blind spot of ongoing pain. Many families give up their jobs to care for severe patients. Using all income and assets to prepare for family caregiving costs is soon a problem for us and our families, and our own future. No matter how much you love your family, it is not easy to constantly care for a patient by their side.
Caregiving has become much more complex than before. The caregiving period for the elderly lasts a long time, and there are cases where you have to care for not just one parent, but perhaps both, or parents of both families. Of course, since multiple caregiving is difficult, most cases involve placing one person in a nursing home and caring for one person, but living with old and long-lived parents still requires predicting and preparing to become a family caregiver at any time. Historically, our society has always relied on families to provide material and emotional support to parents and to support elderly parents, grandparents, and other family members when they can no longer function independently. Of course, it is true that social welfare benefits have increased, but you will feel that the social welfare provided by the country is very insufficient for caring for our families. In an aged society where the number of care recipients increases over time, such as frailty, dementia, Parkinson's disease, or progressive cancer due to the increase in average life expectancy compared to the past, the caregiving role of the family expands and increases accordingly.
1. Increased Responsibility
The responsibility of caregiving depends on the duration or intensity of caregiving. Intensity here is in terms of the time spent each day to provide the necessary care to the patient. According to surveys, usually 15% of families experienced caregiving for less than a year. A similar percentage of families take on caregiving responsibilities for more than 10 years. The remaining 70% report spending about 5 years on family caregiving. Of course, the intensity of care depends on the patient's situation. In cases where only household activities are supported, an average of 85 hours per month are used for care, while in cases of caring for patients with self-care or mobility needs, an average of 253 hours per month are used. Spouses or adult children can recognize and care for the responsibilities of caregiving, but many problems arise when children and adolescents have to care for their parents. The reason why children and adolescents who should receive care from their families jump into caregiving labor is that it is seen as the only alternative to solve the problems of family members left together after the dissolution of the family due to parental divorce, bereavement, imprisonment, etc. They often take on caregiving without any help from relatives, so-called "solo caregiving." The problem is that they do not have a social support system to open their hearts, discuss, and receive comfort.
2. Household Care
Almost all caregivers help patients who need care through household chores such as shopping, laundry, housework, meals, transportation, bills, money management, and home maintenance. 44% of caregivers were found to help with housework every day. Self-care and mobility tasks include walking, moving from bed to wheelchair, bathing the patient, grooming, dressing, assisting with food intake, and cleaning up after excretion. They provide medication for patients several times a day and help with medical appointments and hospital transfers. Seniors with dementia or two or more care needs require the highest level of help from caregivers. Seniors with dementia or severely impaired cognitive function require constant supervision and direct help due to functional limitations and behavioral symptoms. Housework or private care is a frequent and sometimes daily role for caregivers.
3. Providing Emotional and Social Support
When older adults need care due to severe frailty or the onset of debilitating diseases, they need emotional and social support that is different from typical interactions between family members. One important change is the tipping of the balance of reciprocity in the caregiver-patient relationship. As demands increase, there is more to worry about for the patient. Due to the patient's emotional changes and emotional reactions to situations they sometimes encounter, caregivers need to provide a higher level of emotional support. Caregivers may have to deal with depressive symptoms, anxiety, irritability, or anger that are unfamiliar to them. So caregiving families may need a higher level of education to cope with and support such problems.
4. Health and Medical Support
Family involvement in health and medical tasks at home is not new, but it has become more common and often much more complex than in the past. The elderly's home has reached a situation where actual clinical treatment is needed, where caregivers perform a series of nursing or medical tasks that were only provided by licensed or certified professionals in hospitals and nursing homes. As the number of households caring for patients at home increased through the COVID pandemic, caregivers took on minor trauma treatments or emergency treatments that hospitals could not support. This arises partly due to continuous efforts to shorten hospital stays and reduce nursing home admissions, and at the same time due to the need for care of chronic and acute diseases in non-medical institution environments. Medication was once administered simply by medical staff. But today, medications prescribed for home use are delivered not only orally but also through patches, injections, and intravenous injections. If the patient is seriously ill or has a severe disability, the caregiver may manage equipment such as nutrition supply and drainage tubes, catheters, tracheostomy care, manage symptoms, and monitor the care recipient's condition.
5. Care Coordinator
Family caregivers often act as care coordinators. Their role is to help the care recipient receive necessary community and medical coverage benefits. It may include determining the care recipient's eligibility for specific services and potential costs, such as receiving a long-term care grade. This is because often severely ill elderly people and caregivers can receive benefits from medical service providers, public and social welfare agencies. Caregivers often have to navigate these diverse, evolving, and increasingly complex systems without help. The role of coordinator often lies with the family caregiver, who must connect the services the elderly person needs together and also serve as the primary communication link between all parties involved. Individuals who lack some health knowledge or do not understand social welfare services may have difficulty finding social welfare and medical welfare services suitable for the patient.