The pressure on informal carers is sometimes so great that it can derail into elder abuse. MantelzorgNL wants derailed informal care to be better monitored in order to prevent distressing situations. “There’s no malicious intent involved.”
An elderly person with dementia who is strapped to a chair, so that the caregiver can run an errand. A restless man or woman who is given some extra medicine to calm down. An 80-year-old who smells like urine because the caregiver is unable to get them to take a shower.
According to MantelzorgNL, every care provider knows the examples of what is called derailed informal care. “Informal carers help someone with the best intentions, but sometimes the pressure is so high that the situation is derailed,” explains Hanneke de Boer, policy officer at MantelzorgNL.
However, it is unclear how often things go wrong between informal caregivers and the elderly. MantelzorgNL, which stands up for the interests of informal carers, argues for better monitoring. For figures, the organization is now forced to fall back on a 2018 survey by Regioplan. This shows that approximately 1 in 20 elderly people living at home from Rotterdam, Tilburg and Boxtel were the victim of abuse. “We think that in many cases it concerns caregiving that has gone off the rails,” says De Boer.
It is often a sliding scale. In the end there are two victims
emergency admission
The elderly regularly end up in a nursing home through emergency admission. By noting down the causes of these emergency admissions, a possible increase in derailed informal care can become visible, believes MantelzorgNL.
Precisely by better registering elder abuse, worse can be prevented, argues MantelzorgNL. After all, informal carers do not put the person they care for in a bad position with malicious intent. The concern simply grows beyond these people’s heads. “It’s often a sliding scale. In the end there are two victims.” MantelzorgNL also hopes that care providers will learn to identify better and know how to act. “Although it is often difficult for healthcare providers. They see how hard it is for a caregiver, want to relieve them, but know that there is no room for more home care.”
With a little more home care, many carers manage to keep the person they care for at home and you prevent a lot of misery
The aging population makes the problem even more urgent. The Netherlands already has about five million informal carers. Previous research has shown that approximately 460,000 informal caregivers feel heavily burdened. De Boer: “With a little more home care, many informal carers are able to keep the person they care for at home and you prevent a lot of misery.”
More and more municipalities are cutting back on the allowance for informal carers:
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