FAMILY (AND OTHER INFORMAL) CARERS

In Slovenia, 60.000 old people need long term care; around 18.000 of those people live in residential homes, around 6.000 receive public home care, more than 40.000 people are taken care of by family carers. The term family carer has emerged only in the last decades, which shows that in research and politics, this aspect of long term care has long been overlooked.

Family carer is a person that provides unpaid care to someone with a chronic illness, disability or other long lasting health issues, for at least 5 hours a week. Carers are usually relatives (partners, children, daughters in law etc.), sometimes friends, neighbours or volunteer professional workers (district nurses, physiotherapist etc.).

Slovenian and international research shows, that many people are willing to care for their dear ones. According to our research and from our practical work with carers emerge that main reasons for caring are ethical (responsibility towards family), emotional (belonging to a family, love for family), and ultimately, also economical.

Even though family carers put great effort, love and determination into caring, caring for a person that needs a long-term care is not easy. Family carers find themselves dealing with diagnosis of their dear loved ones and they have a lack of knowledge about diseases and nursing, while their work is often taken for granted. A lot of time, family carers do not know where to search for help and what kind of support they should be looking for – Slovenia does not yet have a system solution for long term care and that makes support itself very inadequate and fragmental. Due to their age and health condition, carers would many times need care themselves. Furthermore, many of carers have to care both for children and for older relatives (so called “sandwich” carers) and beside that also have a job responsibilities. Many times they are forced to quit their job. All this factors puts them under extreme stress.

The number of disabled and chronically ill elderly persons is growing and consequently the public expenses for health and social insurance are growing too. The social-wealth systems are therefore becoming overloaded and are in the risk of collapsing in countries all over the world. Family-care and other informal ways of care for the elderly are at the present moment the only prevention to avoid that collapse.

In order to help family carers, public, professional and political support is needed. Carers need effective support of the health and social care system and other support services. Home care and respite care are very underdeveloped in Slovenia. Family carers also need direct support: knowledge and emotional support. Training for family carers is a low cost program where besides knowledge, family carers get the opportunity to meet other family carers that experience similar situations and can provide a mutual support to each other.