The Economic Imperative - 2023 08 13

 

There is an economic imperative to address impacts resulting from continuing, escalating and exacerbating family caregiving socio-economic vulnerabilities. We need to think in terms of risk management and looking at the opportunity costs of leaving family caregiving vulnerabilities unattended.

When family caregivers can no longer provide for their family members who cannot fend for themselves, the burden on the institutional system is at least a 1:1 ratio - ie. family caregiver home is no longer available and family member is now put into institutional setting. However, we also need to consider the health, financial, mental and emotional impacts that the family caregiver is now going through. It is likely they are now also seeking institutional supports in the healthcare sector, but also possibly in the employment, financial, and housing sectors.

There is an economic imperative to understand the tax on family caregiver resources that is unaccounted and untraced in the current situation. In this usage, the word 'tax' is referring to resources that are taxed, drawn down, depleted and not replenished. For example, a family providing caregiving will have a significant increase on unpaid work (ie. providing caregiving coverage in home over 500 hours a month) but there is not a commensurate adjustment to the property tax, house insurance, vehicle insurance, etc. that would acknowledge the real value of that work in terms of healthcare system benefit.

Given the ongoing and increasing stress experienced by family caregivers, there is a high likelihood they will need to access healthcare system resources to regain a healthy baseline. Thus, deficits in providing supports to family caregivers result in additional draw on healthcare system resources.

The economic imperative is that we need to understand the opportunity cost of increasing socio-economic vulnerabilities in families who provide caregiving for family members unable to fend for themselves.

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