SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California family caregivers are feeling the financial stress of taking care of their loved ones.
According to a recent study, 42 million Americans serve in this role. On average, 26% of their incomes go toward care. And in California, it can cost nearly $40,000 to hire help outside of the home, which is among the highest rates in the nation.
Tricia Rosenbaum considers herself a care partner for her husband who was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.
"My husband is not at the point where he's not able to do anything," Rosenbaum said. "I think now, I do more of the cooking than I used to, so I think that's one of the tiny household things that we're already seeing because with dexterity and things like that, it's hard to actually do the things."
She said he will need more help in the future.
"So, whether that's me directly, or if I bring in a paid caregiver, or we may even at some point look at moving into like an assisted living facility," Rosenbaum said.
Many people around the world have to have similar conversations and for some, it can be daunting to discuss.
"It's actually a very expensive process for a lot of families, and we see a lot of people who retire early because they're providing care for a loved one," Michelle Nevins, Deloro Caregiver Resource Center Executive Director, said. "They exit the workforce because they've got a full-time caregiving situation with an aging parent or spouse, and so not only are they exiting at a time usually where their income might be higher, they're losing the aspects of retirement and that ability to kind of really compound their income over time."
The Deloro Caregiver Resource Center is a non-profit that provides support to caregivers. It offers respite care, counseling and even legal services. It also covers a variety of illnesses and situations, such as Alzheimer's, brain injuries, dementia, and even people who are caring for someone more than 60-years-old. Nevins said among the many stressors that have always surrounded caregiving, the pandemic made things even more difficult.
"They may have wanted to place their loved ones in an assisted living facility, but there were obstacles to that during the pandemic and some facilities very early on were not taking new clients because of the risk of exposure, or they had to quarantine for two weeks and the family couldn't see them," Nevins said. "So, isolation became a really big problem for a lot of families that they just decided not to do that, and so as a result we got pretty inundated during the pandemic, more so than ever before."
Rosenbaum reached out for support early on in her husband's diagnosis. It's something she encourages others to look into.
"Even though you feel like you're all alone in this, you're not. There are tens of thousands of people out there doing something similar," Rosenbaum said.
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