Disability/Caregiver Support

Caregivers

• Those who provide care to a person requiring support due to age, disability, illness or special needs
• Usually family members, but can also be friends or foreign domestic workers
• Can be broadly categorised into two groups: (i) Professional caregivers which include doctors, nurses, social workers, and (ii) Family caregivers, which include spouses, children, grandchildren, siblings and foreign domestic workers hired by their families, family caregivers are focused upon here.
• Special note to two groups of family caregivers: Elderly caregivers caring for disabled adult children, disabled people playing caregiver roles
  • See The Survey on Informal Caregiving by MCYS
    • 20% of family caregivers providing care to elderly persons aged 75 years and above with functional limitations are themselves above the age of 65.
  • See A Profile of Older Family Caregivers by CARE and Duke-NUS
    • Older family caregivers are in declining health themselves but spend long hours (up to 60 hours per week) caring for their family member. More than half of family caregivers up to the age of retirement (55-65 years) are juggling long hours of both formal employment and caregiving.
    • More than half of family caregivers aged 70-74 years do not receive help from anyone else to care for their family member
    • Well beyond the retirement age, family caregivers are spending 50 to 60 hours per week caring for their older family member.

• Overly centred on ID/ASD??

Short-Term Outcomes(skills, knowledge, attitudes)		Mid-Term Outcomes(behaviours)		Long-Term Outcomes(impact)		Social Impact
	→		→	Early intervention is timely and effective	→
	→		→
	→

Click here to explore the Caregiver Support Theory of Change.

Key Statistics and Figures	Key Gaps	Knowledge Gaps
An estimated 210,000 people aged 18 to 69 provide care to a family member or peer.
Caregivers are ageing and are becoming less and less able to care for their disabled kin; 70% of caregivers in Singapore (including those who care for the elderly and disabled) are above 40; 10% are between 60 and 69 years of age. Caregiving in Singapore (Sep 2011)
37% of caregivers reported that they had been providing care to their care recipients for over a decade.  Caregiving in Singapore (Sep 2011)
On average, caregivers provided around 6.8 hours of care per day in a typical week. Caregiving in Singapore (Sep 2011)
Close to 74% of caregivers were employed. Caregiving in Singapore (Sep 2011)
About 80% of caregivers received some form of support, be it from other family members (70%) and/or domestic helpers (14%). 21% of caregivers reported being the sole caregiver. Caregiving in Singapore (Sep 2011)