The phone rings before Irene Sluis (58) sits well behind her desk. A man starts telling: his girlfriend lives with her parents and takes care of them. Eight years ago, the care was last recorded. In the meantime, father got several strokes. Now everything has to be reviewed. Can Irene help?
“What spicy all say,” says Sluis. “That’s not nothing.” She slides a notebook towards herself, clicks her pen open and asks: “Can you start at the beginning?”
It soon becomes apparent that the daughter has a burnout. The parents do not see how heavy it has become, tensions are rising, and the informal care home raises questions about inheritance, mortgage and tax.
It will be too much.
In the Netherlands One in three Adults for a neighbor, often in addition to work and their own family. Especially working caregivers feel the pressure: almost half say they are structurally overloaded and a third balance on the edge of a burnout, shows figures from trade union CNV.
In a small office, hidden in the forests of Zeist, the team of the informal care line, part of the MantelzorgNL association, listens to their stories every day. De Lijn was founded twenty -five years ago to support caregivers. Every year the team answers around five thousand phone calls.
“Most conversations start with one problem,” says Sluis, who has been working at the informal care line for seven years. “But if you keep asking, then you unravel more and more.”
Not in every municipality
This Tuesday only Janine van Diest (30) and Irene Sluis are in the office. A third colleague works at home, the fourth is free today. The questions that come in are as small as the team is. Against the wall are books about ‘living loss’ (mourning about someone who is still alive), effectively communicating and informal care homes.
“Informal care is not just about care,” says Van Diest. “It affects every aspect of your life. That is why we learn as much as possible to really listen.”
Piep. Piep. The red light on lock ‘telephone flashes. She picks up the horn. A man says that he wants to put a pre-informal care home in his yard, for a few years, if he needs care himself.
Sluis browses through a brochure, her pen ready to make notes. “In some places that is allowed,” she says, “but it depends strongly on the municipality. Where do you live?” She taps the name on her computer. The information is – as she sees at many municipal websites – fragmented and incomplete. “I have to pick it up and don’t want to wait. Can I call you back later?”
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On paper a wonderful idea: an informal care home on your own yard. ‘But then the municipality of Beren sees on the road’
Bureauchof
It is one of the many conversations this afternoon about informal care homes. For a number of years, these can usually be placed on their own yard without an environmental permit. But what is meant to help informal caregivers, in practice it often appears to be a source of new uncertainty and questions.
People do it with love, their neighbor. But all the controls around it often makes it untenable
Because as soon as such a house is there, mortgages, rent allowance, taxes and even the inheritance can change. For example, an informal care home falls in the yard of the parents, even if it is paid by a child, under the mortgage of the parents. Moreover, each municipality uses different rules for placement. “Many caregivers have no idea how complex this is,” says Van Diest.
The result is a bureaucratic maze. Those who provide care navigates daily between care offices, municipalities, banks and the tax authorities, each with their own forms, rules and counters. “Most people do it with love, their neighbor,” says Van Diest. “But all the control work around it often makes it untenable.”
Sometimes caregivers call problems that are soluble, but rules stand in the way of that solution. For example, a mother called about the care of her handicapped child. Domestic help was not reimbursed, but daytime activities – an expensive, not suitable solution.
“This shows how complicated it can be,” says Sluis. “If the municipality had offered appropriate care, it would have given the family peace and saved money.”
“Sometimes we have to say that something really can’t,” says Van Diest. But even then they do not send anyone with a clod in the reed: they are looking for alternatives, refer or explain what is possible.
And often a conversation also offers support. “It helps that we are not the bogeyman,” says Van Diest. “We don’t determine the rules, we listen, we think along. For many people it is already a relief when someone says: we understand how tough this is.”
Support
Yet the future of the caregivers sometimes makes them gloomy. It policy To let the elderly and the chronically ill live at home longer, puts more and more pressure on their shoulders, while daytime activities and respite care (whereby someone temporarily takes over care) are less and less available.
“And what is still there often does not fit,” says Sluis. “Take the care leave schemes. They are not sufficient in this time, in which both parents usually work full -time.”
The conversations show how difficult to arrange care is. Sometimes children take care of their parents while the relationship is tense. Sometimes it pinches work: in healthcare or education you can rarely slide with grilles.
“Anyone who wants to encourage informal care must provide support,” says Van Diest. “A while ago, different reports appeared about elderly people who killed their own partner at home. Then I wonder: have we stretched the limit of the care policy too far?”
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The Netherlands stands for stating: more and more people need care, but the number of caregivers is decreasing
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