Family Caregivers
Family Caregivers, High-Acuity Home Care, and the Reality Systems Must Address One of the most important conversations emerging in home-based care right now involves family caregivers and whether family members should continue being paid to help support medically complex individuals at home. But I believe the conversation is often being framed far too narrowly. The deeper question is not simply: “Should family caregivers be paid?” The real question is: “What happens when the most knowledgeable, stable, and physiologically attuned caregivers are removed from high-acuity situations without an equivalent replacement structure?” That is a very different discussion. In many high-acuity situations, the very relationship that allowed the expertise, continuity, and stability to develop is the same relationship some systems then treat as a reason the care should not be recognized or compensated. But I cannot un-family Alex just so I can help him. The fact that I am his mother does not erase the...
