CAREGIVING FOR GRANDCHILDREN AND DEMENTIA CAREGIVING: NOT THAT DIFFERENT AMONG HISPANICS

Abstract

Hispanic older adults assuming caregiving roles continue to increase in unprecedented numbers. Development of programs to assist these caregivers to manage their stress and the demands placed on them has also increased. However, the vast majority of these programs are developed focusing more on the specific needs and characteristics of the care-recipients than on caregiver commonalities determined by cultural values. At the core of Hispanic culture are: Familismo, collectivism, personalismo, marianismo, and respeto. We aimed to compare the experience of older Hispanic family caregivers of relatives living with Alzheimer’s disease or related dementias (ADRD), and Hispanic grandparents caring for their grandchildren as a result of parental substance abuse disorders. We conducted a content analysis of qualitative ethnographic interviews of these two populations of caregivers. While the realities of daily caregiving duties were of different nature (dementia vs. childrearing), regardless of care-recipient, caregivers provided narratives supporting the themes: duty to family first, sense of satisfaction, willingly sacrificing, sense of purpose, physically exhausting, emotionally draining, financially straining, role challenges, role captivity, legal stressors, fear, and major stressor. More commonalities than differences were found. Caregivers differed in the root cause of fear (institutionalization vs. children placement in foster care), and the major stressor in their lives. For grandparents the stressor was the perceived or actual continued parental substance abuse. In addition to culturally congruent evidence-based programs to assist Hispanic caregivers to manage their levels of stress, urgent policy changes are needed to support Hispanic family caregivers regardless of age /type of care-recipient.