HP 626 week 7 journal entry informal caregiving and non paid roles

Sample Answer

Unpaid caregivers constitute a group of individuals such as family, friends, and neighbors who dedicate their time and resources to care for an ill, aged, or disabled. Unpaid caregivers have a primary role in assisting individuals attain independence by helping them perform activities of daily living (ADL) such as feeding, grooming, and medication. While helping the individuals perform ADLs, they directly become their primary source of care while in the comfort of home rather than institutions such as nursing homes.

As a result, home-based care can relieve these institutions of increasing patient care burden while providing a personalized point of care to the individuals. Providing home-based care has helped save costs by reducing financial burdens that may have been there if other living options, such as assisted living and nursing homes, were used.

Furthermore, they may help lower readmission rates by ensuring individuals have healthy nutrition and adhere to their treatment. To ensure the caregivers provide good quality care, I would advocate for a comprehensive caregiving support program with several services that would help caregivers.

One of the services the caregivers would receive is training, providing them with educational resources to equip them with knowledge and skills to offer a better quality of care. The program would also provide financial assistance to caregivers that can help cover the cost of service provision and buy medical equipment.

The support program would also have support groups and counseling services for the caregivers to help them navigate the psychological turmoil of caregiving while recognizing the value of the work they contribute to society.

Allocation of funds to the support program from the federal to the local level is one of the ways that the policy can gain funds from taxpayers’ money. The funds can be specifically assigned to cater to the training of caregivers, financially assisting them, and employing certified psychologists to support the program to thrive. 

Whether the family should provide care at their own cost of tax dollars can depend on various factors, including the family’s financial ability to provide care without strain on their resources or need for assistance. In addition, social support may determine whether the family needs assistance supplementing the care they can provide. The last determinant would be public health policies on whether resources are allocated for such care.

Your journal submission was well-written and a pleasure to read. With the rise in aging adults, the need to rely on adult children in informal and formal ways will likely increase. In addition, we are seeing families with fewer adult children and geographic distances that were not the norm in previous years.

This certainly creates unique challenges to this problem. There is certainly an economic impact on the adult child in these roles; therefore, we benefit from a policy solution. We again will encounter a debate about whether personal responsibility or tax-funded resources should be utilized to lessen this economic impact.

I appreciate your input on a policy solution; this topic will become more apparent as our population ages. Your journal entry met the content requirement, good job!