Abstract
As the population of older adults increases in the United States and around the world, the required levels of service grow more complex. While it is not a secret that public policies still have not caught up with the needs of older adults, a rarely analyzed issue is the individual conditions of caregivers and their environments. Whether as a formal or informalarrangement, caregiving serves as the backbone to support older adults’ physical and mental well-being (Vahabi, Wong, & Lofters, 2018; Bookman, & Harrington, 2007).
Unfortunately, few policies directly address the needs of older adults and their caregivers. (Lloyd, 2000). Consequently, our understanding of specific conditions is limited. However, the presence of negative effects, such as unexpected long work hours, harsh working and living conditions, and chronic stress, to name only a few, is prevalent and widespread in the environment of caregivers helping older adults. These conditions, in turn, end up affecting caregivers in unintended ways, fostering social isolation. In some extreme cases, the individual characteristics of the caregiver: undocumented or precarious migration status (as is referred to in Canada [Vahabi, Wong, & Lofters, 2018]), limited English-speaking abilities, low education, etc., further impact their own environment and result in social exclusion. The authors of this paper aim to identify and classify potential risk factors that contribute to social isolation and social exclusion. The objective is to provide evidence to inform policy processes to create and strengthen much needed regulations in these areas.
In order to accomplish this objective, the authors take a two-pronged tactic: 1) Through secondary data analysis, based primarily on the joint report of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC), the dimensions of caregiving will be categorized to identify specific factors that might contribute to social isolation, and 2) Using a phenomenological approach, exploratory interviews will be conducted with people representative of the categories achieved in the first step to determine whether or not the hypothetical statement has merit.
This project could potentially provide information that may help us prevent social isolation and to identify vulnerable populations, among the caregiving community, prone to social exclusion. Moreover, the research would allow us to explore additional dimensions that might affect the care and well-being of the ageing population. It is the intention of the authors to articulate a framework that could identify vulnerabilities and disadvantages of caregivers that might have negative consequences on themselves, and ultimately, could impact older adults as well.