The Role of Young Caregivers

In our country, the majority of people that act as family caregivers are older adults themselves, but not always. Sometimes, younger family members, as young as 12 years old or younger, end up needing to act as a caregiver for an elderly or sick family member, even if they are not the primary caregiver in the family.

 

It makes sense that youths would play a big role in the care and assistance of elderly loved ones thanks to changing family living arrangement, but even though this seems like an obvious conclusion, there’s actually been very little research on the topic and the impact that it has on younger kids and adults. The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine is trying to fix that. A recent study from this institution tracked 28 different individuals between 12 and 19 years old and used a few different measures to determine whether or not they were providing high quality care or not.

 

Medication management was the center of the study’s focus. Information was obtained in an informal interview setting to help researchers get as honest of an answer as possible about care practices and medication. It was found that most of these youths were very effective as caregivers and took great pride in the role that they played within their families.

 

According to the researchers, this study has a few major implications. First, not all doctors who work with elderly individuals are aware of who in the family is acting as a caregiver. If you have a relative who relies on the help of a younger caregiver from time to time, it is important that their doctor knows about this so that they can be more careful with instructions regarding medications, if needed. Many of the youths interviewed revealed that they were getting medication instruction directly from their older loved one. Medication management can be very difficult at times, and ensuring that there are no mistakes made is very important. If these questions are never asked by doctors, it’s unlikely that the answers will ever be known.

 

Young caregivers play an important role in helping elderly family members.

 

Youth caregivers can be very responsible, but they often do not have the same experience and attention to detail that older individuals fulfilling the same role have. Unfortunately, this can lead to mistakes being made.

 

Another consideration that needs to be made, according to these researchers, is that youth caregivers need someone to supervise them. Putting aside the fact that younger caregivers have a lot of other responsibilities on their plates, caregiver burnout is a very real problem even in adults who are used to responsibilities and balancing all of the other obligations that they might have. Younger caregivers need people that care about them to check in on them and make sure that they are holding up under the obligations that they face.

 

Being a caregiver is hard.  Being a young caregiver is even harder. This is an admirable task that many youths have undertaken, but they need help and support if they are going to continue to be effective at helping others.

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