Unpaid caregivers provide the majority of long term care in Canada. Informal caregivers save the public system over $5 billion per year and are equivalent to the work of over 276,000 full time employees12.
According to a 1999 Health Canada study employees juggling work and family cost Canadian employers at least $2.7 billion a year in lost time and employees miss 19.8 million days of work each year due to work family problems14. Furthermore many caregivers are seniors themselves who are coping with their own aging issues. In fact 36% of informal caregivers in the community are over the age of 7012.
The caregiver role is highly demanding. Caregivers of older people have higher than average rates of depression. Studies show that caregivers experience a sense of burden and an estimated 46 percent are clinically depressed. Up to half of the primary caregivers caring for someone with Alzheimer’s develop significant psychological distress15.12Stephenson, M., Sawyer, E.,
(2002). Continuing the Care: The Issues and Challenges of Long Term Care. CHA
Press Ottawa, ON
13Statistics Canada: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/seniors-aines/pubs/factoides/en/no12.htm
14Duxbury, Linda, PhD, Chris Higgins, PhD, and Karen Johnson, PhD. “An
Examination of the implications and Costs of Work-Life Conflict in Canada.”
Final report submitted to Health Canada.
15American Association of Geriatric Psychiatry, www.aagpgpa.org;
“geriatrics and mental health -the facts”
A Profile of Caregivers1
• One million Canadians provide care at home for a chronically ill family member or friend.
• 62% of these primary caregivers have been providing such care for at least three years; 20% have been providing it for more than 10 years.
• 70% of primary caregivers say that providing care at home has been stressful; 77% cent of those reporting stress say caregiving has created emotional difficulties for them; 17% fit a high stress profile.
Caregiving is expensive, life altering, emotionally trying, and
simply far more common than most people imagine.
Here are more figures:
 | 40%
of primary caregivers provide daily assistance in basic
hygiene.
| 35%
say they became primary caregivers because there was no one
else to do it.
| 31%
of primary caregivers have a household income less than
$25,000.
| 25%
of primary caregivers have had to quit work, retire, or change
jobs because of caregiving..
| 52%
of those currently employed said caregiving had been
disruptive to their work. | |
1 Source: Health Canada Caregiver Profile 2002.
From the website of Social Development Canada, a department of the
Government of Canada.
http://www.sdc.gc.ca/en/cs/comm/sd/caregivers.shtml
Informal caregivers provide more than 80 percent of all the care needed by people with long-term health problems.
Caregivers often face the challenge of trying to balance work, their own health needs, and caregiving responsibilities. Stress and fatigue result, often to the point where caregivers become care receivers themselves. A proportion of caregivers reduce work hours, or leave employment altogether, for caregiving reasons. These caregivers face immediate and long-term economic and non-economic repercussions.
Providing care at home is not a new phenomenon. What have changed are the circumstances under which families now provide care. In Canada our population is aging and the elderly are living longer. More and more women—our traditional caregivers—are in the workforce, and families are smaller and more dispersed. These demographic and social trends are leading to an imbalance in the growing demand for caregivers at a time when the supply is diminishing.
Statistics on Informal Caregiving
| In 2002, 23% of Canadians aged 45–64 provided care to seniors. Of this
group, 70% were also employed (General Social Survey, 2002).
Over 2 million adults (aged 15 and over) with disabilities receive help,
mostly from family members, with everyday activities (Participation and
Activity Limitation Survey, 2001). | |
| Policy Papers, |
| Best Practices Manuals, |
| Caregivers' Bill of Rights |
