Social support programs for informal caregivers in Malaysia

Abstract

Informal caregivers are an important source of long-term care in the community. Conventionally, they are individuals who are co-reside or live close, and feel some emotional and/or obligatory bond with the sick person that they are caring for. They have profound responsibility to the sick person. Their tasks are very tiring and time-consuming. It ranges from "personal help" (e.g. bathing, clothing, toileting) to "practical help (e.g. helping with housework and cooking, looking for their safety, attending their monthly medical check-up). This resulted to burn-out and stress amongst them; which later would have negative impact on the quality of the care given. Due to that, stress face by informal caregivers should be deal with greater understanding. Truthful understandings of factors which contribute to stress amongst them are valuable in drafting an appropriate social support programs for them. With that understanding, we conducted a quantitative study last 2009 to identify consequences of caregiving amongst 175 randomly selected informal caregivers in Malaysia. Findings show that unsupportive community, worn-out, unavailability of social services to assist them and ill-equipped of their mind to accept the fact that their loved one is terminally sick contribute to their stress. Caregiving also contribute to financial, social, physical and emotion problems to them. Drafting a social program from empirical evidence is effective; yet lacking in analysis of one's social-physical capacity. Because of that, we would like to use this conference as a platform for us to gain comparative perspectives, ideas and experiences about social support programs for informal caregivers from other member countries.