AARP estimates about 41 million Americans care for their adult family members, a number that has increased as life expectancy has grown. About 4 in 10 such caregivers say they have plans in place for their own future care, according to the organization’s 2015 Caregiving in the U.S. survey.
Often, people who are relatively young and healthy don’t spend much time contemplating what life will look like when they get old and frail — until they see it reflected in the life of a loved one.
via Washington Post.
Looking ahead
There is a lack of senior care services designed for millennial end-users. Investors can expect increasing demand for services among millennial caregivers, including:
- Estate and financial planning
- End-of-life planning
- Caregiver community, support, and education
Founders building senior care solutions should consider the changing nature of the “sandwich” generation and their importance as caregivers and, ultimately, consumers of these products and services.
via Forbes.
Related Reading:
Providing Social Security Credits for Caregivers.
- In computing the Social Security retirement or disability benefit, imputed earnings for up to five family service years should be granted to a worker who leaves or reduces his/her participation in the work force in order to provide care to children under the age of six or to elderly family members.
As our nation awaits for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the Trump administration can add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, two important questions affecting more than 43.5 million Americans won’t be asked at all. The missing questions address whether a U.S. resident is a caregiver for an adult family member or a disabled child and whether a resident is receiving care from a family member.
The 2020 Census does include questions about grandparents caring for their grandchildren (up to age 18) in their homes. But what about family caregiving at the other end of the age spectrum? Nothing.
via Next Avenue.
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How does the OAA affect us?
- Helping people stay in their homes Approximately 90 percent of older people want to stay in their communities, rather than move to institutionalized care. “The fear of having to enter a nursing home, with its associated loss of independence and threat of impoverishment, weighs heavily on the minds of many older persons and their caregivers,” former AARP Senior Vice President Joyce A. Rogers said in a letter to lawmakers. OAA funding for programs to support independent living “is a drop in the bucket compared with the national budget,” says Dan Adcock of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. Along with services, the act funds research and programs that promote independence.
via AARP.
Related Reading:
These programs help seniors stay as independent as possible in their homes and communities. In addition, OAA services help seniors avoid hospitalization and nursing home care and, as a result, save federal and state funds that otherwise would be spent on such care.
Read more about the Older Americans Act by clicking here.
If Congress truly wants to help young families, it could boost Social Security benefits by creating caregiver credits for adults who spend time out of the workforce caring for loved ones.
2016 study by AARP found that the average caregiver spends $6,954 a year on out-of-pocket costs caring for a family member. The expenses range from $7 for medical wipes to tens of thousands of dollars to retrofit a home with a walk-in shower or hire outside help.
At the federal level, bills that would have created a federal income tax credit of up to $3,000 never got out of congressional committees last year.
“Whether I’m in Billings, Mont., or in Mississippi, the caregiver tax credit is something that people are asking for,” Ryan said. “All they’re asking for is a little financial help to offset these costs.”
A tax credit, said Brown and other caregivers, would be welcome relief to the estimated 4.5 million family caregivers in California who care for a loved one with a chronic, disabling or serious health condition. Nationwide, the AARP estimates there are about 40 million people caring for family members.
via Kaiser Health News.
Related Reading:
Providing Social Security Credits for Caregivers.
- In computing the Social Security retirement or disability benefit, imputed earnings for up to five family service years should be granted to a worker who leaves or reduces his/her participation in the work force in order to provide care to children under the age of six or to elderly family members.
As mothers, caregivers, and members of the workforce, most women of the 116th Congress understand these critical issues and are well positioned to affect change.
These trends inordinately impact women who tend to spend more time out of the workforce as a consequence of their caregiving responsibilities. Women earn less than men even when doing the same jobs and they more often work part-time or in jobs that do not offer retirement savings plans.
As a result of caregiving, it is estimated that women spend 12 fewer years in the paid workforce over their lifetimes. At younger ages they are primarily responsible for caring for children, and at older ages women generally have the responsibility of caring for elderly parents or older relatives.
As more people survive into their 80s and 90s, there are more people living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias than ever before. And the burden is one that primary-care physicians can’t handle alone.
“We realized we needed to do something different,” Kales says. “We just can’t train enough physicians to provide dementia care. Instead, we need to take the daily treatment and management of these patients out of the hands of physicians and put it into the hands of the caregivers themselves.”
It’s an important move. Researchers have shown that the majority of people with dementia are cared for at home by members of their family. And that those family members, in turn, have higher incidence of stress and depression, as well as lower overall quality of life.
“The trick seems to be in training family caregivers to spot triggers of behavior and problem-solve around those triggers, to look for underlying causes and then creatively develop strategies,” Kales says. But such approaches are rarely employed because there’s no systematic way to teach people how to use them.
via NPR.
Related Reading:
Providing Social Security Credits for Caregivers.
- In computing the Social Security retirement or disability benefit, imputed earnings for up to five family service years should be granted to a worker who leaves or reduces his/her participation in the work force in order to provide care to children under the age of six or to elderly family members.
As the numbers of Americans afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease continue to swell to an estimated 5.7 million, so do the legions of loved ones caring for friends and family members. The toll on Bartholomew’s own mental health is one of the reasons the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America focuses on the nation’s estimated 16 million unpaid caregivers.
With no cure on the horizon, the foundation has been highlighting the necessity of better support for those caregivers through a national tour. It stopped in Nashville earlier this spring, was in Tempe, Ariz., in June and heads to Fairfax, Va., in September; the tour includes at least six more cities in the fall.
via NPR.
Related Reading:
Providing Social Security Credits for Caregivers.
- In computing the Social Security retirement or disability benefit, imputed earnings for up to five family service years should be granted to a worker who leaves or reduces his/her participation in the work force in order to provide care to children under the age of six or to elderly family members.
Max Richtman, President and CEO of the Washington, DC-based National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, gives his take on the Census Bureau’s 2017 statistical projections, too.
“Despite how cataclysmic this may sound, the rising number of older people due to the aging of baby boomers is no surprise and has been predicted for many years. This is why the Social Security system was changed in 1983 to prepare for this eventuality. Under current law, full benefits will continue to be paid through 2034 and we are confident that Congress will make the necessary changes, such as raising the wage cap, to ensure that full benefits continue to be made well into the future,” says Richtman.
Richtman calls informal caregiving “a critical part of a care plan” that enhances an older person’s well-being. “While there currently are programs such as the Medicaid Waiver that will pay family members who provide caregiving support more can be done to incentivize caregiving so that loss of personal income and Social Security work credits are not barriers to enlisting the help of younger individuals to provide informal support services,” he says.
Adds Richtman, the Medicare and Medicaid benefits which reimburse for the home-based services and skilled nursing care “will be unduly strained ”as the diagnosed cases of Alzheimer’s disease skyrockets with the growing boomer population. He calls on Congress to “immediately provide adequate research funding to the National Institutes of Health to accelerate finding a cure in order to save these programs and lower the burdens on family caregivers and the healthcare system. “
via Go Local Prov.