Ideagen Global - Catalyze Magazine, January 2023

METRICS IN
CAREGIVING WITH
AARP
By: Jean Accius
George Sifakis:
Let's talk about moments in care
caregiving. Caregiving is a critical
element of what you do at AARP,
and I'd love to hear from you. Why
is caregiving so vital for those that
need it at this moment in our
nation's history and globally?
Jean Accius:
We know that around the country,
people are aging and living longer.
In the US, we have over 48 million
family caregivers who provide care
each and every day. These are
daughters or sons who are caring
for a mom, dad, spousal partner,
neighbor, or friend. Usually, they're
really trying to do the best that they
can.
I will talk about this on two fronts.
One is the individual, and two is
societal, and they're both
interconnected. People don't wake
up saying, 'I'm a caregiver today.'
Typically, what tends to happen,
and you get to just kind of think
about this, even in your family
situation, you're taking your mom,
your dad, your spouse, your
partner, or a friend to the doctor's
office. And then over time, what
started off as a trip here and there
starts becoming every week.
Then you find yourself doing
things like helping with eating,
bathing, dressing, or in some
cases, particularly as the
illness or the condition
progress, doing very
complicated medical nursing
task like giving injections, tube
feedings, wound care, the
whole nine yards.
You're dealing with this
caregiving in an emotional,
physical, and even financial
way. Family caregivers spend
20% of their income out of
pocket caregiving, so that's
roughly about $7,000 a year,
depending on the condition and
depending on whether or not
the person actually lives with
you or near you. If you are
caregiving for someone in
another state, or even within
the state, but long distance,
you're looking at much higher
numbers. So obviously, there's
a huge emotional, physical,
and financial cost to caregiving.
60% of caregivers are working,
so they're trying to juggle their
caregiving responsibilities with
their work responsibilities.
It might come to a point where
they either have to call in sick, or in
some cases, leave the workforce
altogether, which means that their
own financial security is at risk,
and they're just looking for help.
Because particularly in the US
context, we don't have an
infrastructure in place to support
those caregivers who are providing
the care.
A lot of this is being done unpaid. If
you were to quantify that, it would
be roughly 470 billion a year. Well,
what are the implications, primarily
from an economic standpoint? We
at AARP did some work,
particularly with the global thought
leadership team, and what we
found was the fact that just
providing some financial support
like paid caregiving, for example,
would save the US economy 1.7
trillion by 2030. So, there's an
economic business case for this
because you're actually able to, in
many cases, keep people in the
workforce, while simultaneously
relieving the workforce's economic
pressures.
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