The Systems Imperative - 2023 08 13

 

The systems imperative of this research speaks to the pending systemic failure when family caregiving reaches its inevitable breaking point. 

The negative impacts of family caregiving on family socio-economic vulnerabilities escalates the longer family caregiving is needed to provide care to a family member that cannot fend for themselves. The declining health of the family member as they reach the end of their life exacerbates the impact of negative socio-economic vulnerabilities on the caregiving family. 

When all family caregiving households are evaluated in relation to the overall impact they are having in providing caregiving infrastructure to the healthcare system, these caregiving households can be considered part of the system, caregiving households can be considered as a sub-system of the overall caregiving infrastructure. We need to understand the volume of operations being carried out in family caregiving households in relation to the overall healthcare caregiving system.

Given the escalating and exacerbating stress on family caregiving homes, we need to understand what it is going to mean to the overall healthcare system when family caregiving resources are lost. What will happen when families are no longer willing or able to shoulder the burden of care being offset onto family homes at this time?

From a systems perspective, we need to understand the proportion of caregiving work being provided in family caregiving settings and compare the flow of resources to support that work. Lack of adequate supports to the family caregiving system will result in catastrophic system failure across all caregiving institutions.


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