With the aging of the population in the First State caregiving has become a top priority for AARP Delaware. Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with state director Lucretia Young about measures to improve the conditions for caregivers in the state.
RUSH: Around 18.5% of adults in Delaware are caregivers. Most are female, and over the age of 50. This is Don Rush. Many are looking after for a parent with ailments ranging from Alzheimer's disease and cancer to heart disease, and the average caregiver provides nearly 31 hours a week with many experiencing the stress that comes with it. We turn to Lucretia young state director for AARP Delaware.
YOUNG: The landscape is rapidly evolving around caregiving. In Delaware, there's an estimated 197,000 caregivers and Don, this constitutes 24% of adults that are currently providing care to a family member or a friend, or have provided care over the past year. Across our country, we found that there are 63 million Americans that are family caregivers, and without the support, many Americans would be forced into costly nursing homes. There are so many activities that the caregivers are responsible for, like meal preparation, administering medicines, managing finances, they assist with bathing, dressing, feeding, getting folks to medical services. And so I'm sure in the area you're in a little further down south, that this is the reality as well.
RUSH: Do you think we've been unprepared for this? I mean, I constantly hear from people who have to take care of loved ones and so on and so forth, particularly their parents that they didn't tell us about this.
YOUNG: People have been taking care of each other for years. Let me just say that I was a caregiver on a very personal level, and so 2023, our studies showed that the annual unpaid contributions of caregivers ran up to $600 billion and the annual hours of care spent on caregiving was 36 billion hours in 2023. Folks have realized this for some time. Sometimes I think that in some of the work that we do, AARP, we find that folks don't realize that we're kind of all in this together. Your friends, other people in your community are caregivers, and people have been going through this for many years. They may not have given it a title, but people have been taking care of each other for years. Now, the population's aging, there's a lot going on, and more and more people are becoming caregivers. In fact, our numbers in Delaware rose from 123,000 to 197,000, and that's since our last study. And then there are a lot of younger caregivers, younger individuals that are caring for family members right now.
RUSH: In terms, by the way, the stress of taking care of someone, particularly someone who needs a lot of attention while at the same time someone has to work and take care of families and so on and so forth. What kind of breaks do you think they need?
YOUNG: There are all types of things. Flexible work hours, financial assistance, mobility options to get their loved ones to different services that they need. AARP has been looking at quite a few policy issues. One of those items is looking at a caregiving tax credit. It's a proposed federal tax credit of up to $5,000 for working caregivers. On a local level here in Delaware, me and my team have been working and talking to our legislators, and we're hoping to move forward a Delaware caregivers tax credit as well. So the financial piece is really, really important to caregivers.
RUSH: Lucretia Young State Director of AARP Delaware. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
