Abstract
BackgroundIn contrast to a growing body of research on the situation of adult family care givers, in Germany hardly anything is known about the situation of children and teenagers who are involved in the care of their relatives.MethodsIn this Grounded Theory study 81 semi structured interviews have been carried out with children and their parents in 34 families, in which one member is chronically ill. 41 children and 41 parents participated and the sample is heterogeneous and diverse.ResultsOn the one hand, there is the phenomenon 'keeping the family together", which describes how families themselves cope with the chronic illness and also, which tasks to what extent are being shifted and redistributed within the family in order to manage daily life. Influencing factors, the children's motives as well as the impact on the children also belong to this phenomenon. The second phenomenon 'to live a normal course of life' describes concrete wishes and expectations of support for the family to manage the hindered daily life. These two phenomena linked together constitute the 'model of experience and construction of familial care, in which children take over an active role'.ConclusionIt will be discussed, that the more families are in dire need of support, the more their distress becomes invisible, furthermore, that management of chronic illness is a process, in which the entire family is involved, and thus needs to be considered, and finally, that young carer's relief is not possible without relief of their parents.
Highlights
In contrast to a growing body of research on the situation of adult family care givers, in Germany hardly anything is known about the situation of children and teenagers who are involved in the care of their relatives
It will be discussed, that the more families are in dire need of support, the more their distress becomes invisible, that management of chronic illness is a process, in which the entire family is involved, and needs to be considered, and that young carer's relief is not possible without relief of their parents
We interviewed families from all over Germany covering a variety of family constellations, social milieus, and numerous chronic illnesses
Summary
In contrast to a growing body of research on the situation of adult family care givers, in Germany hardly anything is known about the situation of children and teenagers who are involved in the care of their relatives. Research especially in the United Kingdom (UK) has led to a growing understanding of the situation of young carers over the last 15 years. According to these findings, the children are between eight and ten years old as they begin to take over caring tasks, and as young carers, they are on average 12 years old [1,2,3]. One has to be cautious with the transferability of data, but if the British prevalence rate were transferable to Germany, there would be more than 200.000
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