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Caring for the caregiver: Why policy must shift from addressing needs to enabling caregivers to flourish

Beach, B; Bélanger-Hardy, L; Harding, S; Rodrigues Perracini, M; Garcia, L; Tripathi, I; Gillis, M; (2022) Caring for the caregiver: Why policy must shift from addressing needs to enabling caregivers to flourish. Frontiers in Public Health , 10 , Article 997981. 10.3389/fpubh.2022.997981. Green open access

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Abstract

Policies supporting caregivers (“caregiver policies”) are limited in the extent to which they meet the needs of those who care for others. Where policies do exist, they focus on relieving the burdens associated with caring or the needs of the person they care for, rather than consider the holistic needs of the caregiver that would enable them to flourish. We argue that the established approach to caregiver policies reflects a policy failure, requiring a reassessment of current practice related to caregiver support. Often, caregiver policies target the care recipient rather than the caregiver's needs. Through a consultative exercise, we identified five areas of need that existing caregiver policies touch upon. Yet current approaches remain piecemeal and inadequate in a global context. Caregiver policies should not just relieve burden to the extent that caregivers can continue in the role, but they should support caregivers to flourish, and future work may benefit from drawing on related frameworks from positive psychology, such as the PERMA™ model; this is important for both policymakers and researchers.

Type: Article
Title: Caring for the caregiver: Why policy must shift from addressing needs to enabling caregivers to flourish
Location: Switzerland
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.997981
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.997981
Language: English
Additional information: © 2022 Beach, Bélanger-Hardy, Harding, Rodrigues Perracini, Garcia, Tripathi, Gillis and Dow. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Keywords: Flourishing, global aging, informal care, policy, positive psychology, unpaid caregivers, Humans, Caregivers, Policy
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Epidemiology and Public Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10161313
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