How important is family or informal caregiving in the provision of long-term care?
• Family caregivers have always been the main source of the long-term care services here in the United States. • Informal care plays a significant role in preventing or delaying the need of a disabled elder to go into a nursing home. • Approximately 95% of all older adults who experience limitations in their daily activities have family members involved in the personal care. • As disability increases, elders receive more and more informal care. 86% percent of elders at greatest risk of nursing home placement live with others and receive an average of 60 hours of informal care per week, supplemented by little over 14 hours of assistance from paid helpers. • The degree of family caregiver involvement has remained fairly constant over more than a decade, bearing witness to the remarkable resilience of the American family in caring for older adults, despite increasing geographic separation, greater numbers of women in the workplace, and other changes in family life. • Recent changes in the
