At Kapok, we specifically focus on the field of caregiving and the challenges that come with it.
Yet, caregiving isn’t as simple as it may first appear.
Indeed, many people aren’t fully aware of what a caregiver is, while others may not recognize that they act as one.
The short definition is that a caregiver is a person that provides some type of support or assistance to another, frequently a family member. In many cases that assistance is unpaid and it will often be required in the long-term.
There are many different tasks that are involved in caregiving, including:
- Buying groceries
- Helping with medication
- Assisting with bathing and/or toileting
- Talking to doctors
- Providing transportation
- Acting as an on-call family member, should any issues arise
- Helping the individual out of bed
- Preparing meals
- Handling crises that emerge
- Cleaning the house and/or helping with maintenance
These tasks range from the simple to the complex and vary dramatically depending on the individual needing care.
As a service, caregiving is often critical, giving people the chance to live and grow old in their own homes. In many cases, this simply wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
Additionally, the caregiving processes help to keep the family members safe. For example, helping a senior with bathing can dramatically reduce the risk of falls and even a single fall can potentially have devastating impacts on quality of life and health.
In a similar way, providing transportation for a senior can potentially decrease the risk of accidents, especially when a senior can no longer safely drive.
These areas show that caregiving truly is critical and provides valuable support for quality of life.
Like many nations, the United States is also facing growing demand for caregiving. In part, this is occurring because the population is aging, with more people reaching retirement than there are in the working population.
Estimates suggest that there more than 1.6 million direct care workers will be needed by 2020 (1) and that estimate doesn’t even consider informal caregivers.
So, it’s clear that the demand for caregiving is huge and is likely to increase for some time yet.
Additionally, the pattern of increase suggests that the direct care workforce simply will not be able to meet the level of demand. This may increase the need for informal caregivers, making them more critical than ever.
The Challenges of Caregiving
Caregiving truly is important and it makes a large difference. But, that isn’t the only reason that we focus on it with this blog.
Instead, we feel that there is a strong need to provide support and guidance to caregivers because the role is much more challenging than many people realize.
Individually, the various caregiving tasks may not seem like a lot – especially if you aren’t caregiving full-time. For that matter, many people don’t even view themselves as caregivers because of how basic the tasks seem.
But, regardless of the specific things that you do and don’t do, caregiving is a stressful role and one that rapidly wears people down.
For one thing, caregivers need to fit in their family members needs on top of an already busy life and schedule.
Many caregivers are also part of a ‘sandwich’ generation, where they need to care for their own parents while also supporting their children. It’s easy to see just how stressful that situation can be, especially for people with limited time or money.
At the same time, caregiving means that you are responsible for the health and wellbeing of another person.
That brings with it a large amount of stress, especially as some seniors are stubborn or don’t recognize the importance of what you are doing.
Caregiving also has many effects that people simply don’t expect.
After all, you’re caring for an adult, not a child. As such, you’re supporting a person who still has some degree of autonomy and may not agree with your ideas about what is best for them.
This can mean you have to make some challenging decisions and the emotional impacts can be severe.
To make matters worse, caregiving frequently becomes consuming.
In many cases, this means that people often spend as much time as they can supporting their loved one. Even part-time caregivers find that their family member is never far from their thoughts.
That pattern might sound good but it leaves you with little time to care for yourself.
Indeed, caregivers often end up putting their own needs last. This can easily happen even when you are actively trying to care for yourself.
Self-care truly is critical but actually doing this is much more difficult than it sounds.
At the same time, many caregivers have limited support. This includes a lack of governmental and policy support, but also the fact that other family members and friends don’t help.
As a result, caregivers often end up isolated.
For full-time caregivers, this can be an especially significant problem because it may not be safe to leave the family member in the house alone. This means that you have to get somebody else to take over if you want to take a break. For some people, actually finding somebody to do so is extremely difficult.
There are many other challenges to consider too and a key aim of this blog is to address these and show you potential solutions.
Every caregiving situation is different and the solutions for one person may not apply to another. Nevertheless, the more techniques you have access to, the better potential to take care of yourself and the person you’re caring for effectively.
With that in mind, please do not hesitate to leave a comment under any post or send us an email if you have any questions about the content on this site or about caregiving.
Likewise, please let us know if there are specific topics that you want to be covered or areas that you feel we have missed.
Leave a Reply