Informal care in times of a public health crisis: Objective burden, subjective burden and quality of life of caregivers in the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Gräler, Leonoor Bremmers, Leonarda Bakx, Pieter van Exel, Job van Bochove, Marianne
Abstract	AbstractIn the Netherlands, about one‐third of the adult population provides unpaid care. Providing informal caregiving can be very straining in normal times, but the impact of a public health crisis on caregivers is largely unknown. This study focuses on the question of how caregiver burden changed following the COVID‐19 pandemic, and what characteristics were related to these changes. We use self‐reported data from a sample of 965 informal caregivers from the Netherlands 3 months into the pandemic to investigate how the objective burden (i.e. hours spent on caregiving) and the subjective burden had changed, and what their care‐related quality of life (CarerQol) was. We found that on average the subjective burden had increased slightly (from 4.75 to 5.04 on a 0–10 scale). However, our analysis revealed that some caregivers were more affected than others. Most affected caregivers were women, and those with low income, better physical health, decreased psychological health, childcare responsibilities, longer duration of caregiving and those caring for someone with decreased physical and psychological health. On average, time spent on care remained the same (a median of 15 h per week), but certain groups of caregivers did experience a change, being those caring for people in an institution and for people with a better psychological health before the pandemic. Furthermore, caregivers experiencing changes in objective burden did not have the same characteristics as those experiencing changes in perceived burden and quality of life. This shows that the consequences of a public health crisis on caregivers cannot be captured by a focus on either objective or subjective burden measures or quality of life alone. Long‐term care policies aiming to support caregivers to persevere during a future crisis should target caregivers at risk of increased subjective burden and a lower CarerQol, such as women, people with a low income and people with childcare responsibilities. Such policies should consider that reducing objective burden may not necessarily lead to a reduction in subjective burden for all caregivers.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC9538241&blobtype=pdf
Page Count	12
ISSN	09660410
Journal	Health & Social Care in the Community [Health Soc Care Community]
Volume Number	30
DOI	10.1111/hsc.13975
PubMed Central reference number	PMC9538241
Issue Number	6
PubMed reference number	36068677
e-ISSN	13652524
Language	English
Publisher	John Wiley and Sons Inc.
Publisher Date	2022-09-06
Publisher Place	Hoboken
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2022 The Authors. Health and Social Care in the Community published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Subject Keyword	caregiver burden COVID‐19 informal care public health crisis quality of life
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Sociology and Political Science Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Social Sciences Social Work Health Policy