In private homes, we learn yet of another world—of quiet angels with gentle hearts. Back home, they used to be teachers, bank tellers, office workers, engineers, or registered nurses who handle with special grace the dignity of their “clients’” last moments. They help not to torment these people with meaningless chemical assaults in their last days, when they could no longer be at a hospice inside a board and care facility, each morning.
Each morning, they wheel about in a decompressed pack of giggling, clean-looking men and women, whose smiles are warm and clean that help calm the fears of the old folks who deal with the perceived notion of rejection by their family and to help them accept conditions that could be deemed intolerable, including unsafe caregiver to patient ratios.
They wore their tact like a uniform – always unassumingly magnificent, alert to a flicker of doom, ready to pummel a failing heart back to life! They are ready rise to an emergency with swift and impersonal skill, and fight with tenderness to save a life and a special acrobatic grace.
If the caregiver is lucky, he or she could watch the ebb tide and flow of the respite of a TV, listen to the radio. Saddled with culture clash, he or she can help himself or herself with those stupefying, awful food.
Whether in high rise multi-story building, a cozy condo, or in any elegant sprawling California-style bungalow, stately mansions at Bel Air or Hancock Park where the caregiver is cocooned for five days or a whole week, she is aware of how eerily the outside world drops away. At home by the side of the “client,” she is intimate with the bleak environment that suddenly becomes her temporary domain.
A caregiver. in general terms, is the one who is responsible for the care of someone who has poor mental health, is physically disabled or whose health is impaired by chronic sickness or old age. A caregiver is an unpaid or paid relative or friend of that individual that help in their activities of daily living. A caregiver is someone who provides an unpaid care by looking after an ill, frail or disabled family member, friends or partner.
In the so-called Sandwich Generation, caregivers are the people who care for their aging parents while supporting their own children.
But because of the declining standards of living and economy, many caregivers are immigrant workers who toil long unregulated hours, are underpaid, who left their families behind that required care themselves which put them under further stress and pressure. Throw in the utter non-support from social work or health services, and the fact that some of them remain hidden or invincible as undocumented aliens.
They play many roles while care giving such as health provider, care manager, friend, companion, surrogate decision maker and advocate.
They manage medications, personal hygiene, take patients to their doctors, take care of household chores, meals or bills.
The running flaps and presumed conclusions over board and care make the choice of putting one’s trust in someone to care for loved ones—that has reached cross roads—one of life’s most difficult decisions .
While most who work in the field are caring and well-trained, there is no denying the essential truth of such places. Bedrooms are small, dark and cramped. The hallways are long and harshly lit. They have pathetic offerings of forlorn iceberg lettuce salad in tiny plates, accompanied with food that came from a can or frozen meals—microwaved in small portions passed off as lunch or dinner.
Today there are viable alternatives, and best solutions for most, if not more strict standard on board and care.
You can choose your board and care facility, by collecting referrals, talking with social workers and learning the in’s and out’s about caregivers and consumers.
Let me tell you about a factual nugget: about 90 percent of board and care facilities are owned by Filipinos.
A standing example is a table of a courageous Ilongga, the one who, many years earlier, came with a couple of hundred dollars in her purse, with two young children before becoming the most successful board and care operator here in Southland, from Hancock Park. The owner’s resiliency in the field of health services has won respect and admiration even from her American counterparts.
Ms. Vina Nacionales works while half the country is asleep. She is on the phone, on the computer, she does her own photocopying, and even networking with her other facilities
She tells us, ”my central effort is to assure clients a sanctuary of comfort and affections, and my personal accessibility. Health care is not a business, but more of a vocation, a calling. The role of caregivers is a very important one, both functionally and economically, considering the increasingly aging population of all developed societies. While organizations provide support for the disabled and old, various forms of support for caregivers should also be developed as well.
That was the topic of our conversation: the lack of public awareness, humanitarian and government support groups. The major provider of long term care in any country, have also long terms care needs of their own.
But who will take care of the caregivers?
