Avainsana: omaishoitajuus

Picture from Pixabay

Thank you for everyone who has read our blog about informal care!

Special thanks to the amazing working life representatives who helped us to understand the life of a caregiver and their children. We have learned a lot while writing this blog and hope that the readers have also received a lot of information about informal care families and the obstacles they face in their life and that our blogs have brought at least some awareness to the topic. 

Masir, Sini & Minna T.

All our blog posts written in Maria’s or Joonatan’s point of view are partly based on the interview we did with our working life representative

“I really miss my friends. It’s not as fun to play with legos alone, usually friends give ideas and build cities with me. Sometimes mom plays with me, but she just isn’t a very good builder. Arttu is like the best builder in the whole world, he’s gonna be like an archi… tect when he’s older. I’m really jealous of Arttu, he has a big brother that is like over ten, and he is super awesome. Sometimes he played with us, and the best times were when he gave a lot of speed in the swing, I swear I almost spinned around once! Having a big brother or sister would be amazing… I haven’t had anyone to play with for like forever.

All our blog posts written in Maria’s or Joonatan’s point of view are partly based on the interview we did with our working life representative 

“At times like these I’m glad I don’t have any more children. Joonatan had a bad dyspnea (shortness of breath) last night. I had to call an ambulance and luckily they got him to calm down and feeling better again. I know many caregivers have more than one child and they must feel exhausted since I am too with only one child. I wouldn’t have time for other kids right now even though Joonatan is getting healthier. 

All our blog posts written in Maria’s or Joonatan’s point of view are partly based on the interview we did with our working life representative

”Corona has affected our, and everybody’s lives greatly, but in different ways. Generally, people have had to change their methods of working, or at least be a lot more careful with hygiene and safety distances. For our life with Joonatan COVID-19 has had different changes. Our life was already very distanced from others, and we had very little contact with others even before the outbreak. No going to the shops, or other public places for that matter. But for our already limited services and support it has affected greatly. For example, temporary caregivers are so busy now that I haven’t been able to have my vacation days for a long time. The caregivers are reserved for the severely disabled or ill. If we’re lucky, we get a worker from the home services to take care of Joonatan for a couple of hours.

Informal care support is based on an assessment of the client’s situation and the service entity needed for living at home. The city of Vantaa seperates the child’s need for service in two groups:

1. The injury or disease causes the child to need daily treatment/help for their wellbeing. The caregiver is bound to care for the child continuously. The child being treated has to have at least a moderate difficulties to function compared to healthy children.
2. The injury or disease causes the child to need  a lot of daily treatment/help for their wellbeing at all hours of a day. The caregiver is bound to care for the child continuously also at night. The child being treated has to have at least a severe difficulties to function compared to healthy children.

Joonatan belong to the group number one. He doesn’t need acute treatment anymore and the hospital visits have decreased. Maria’s biggest responsibility is making sure that Joonatan takes his medication and that he doesn’t get infections that would make his illness worse again.  

Informal care, or omaishoitajuus, is when a person looks after a relative in need of special care. The most common situation is when a person ages to the point of not being able to take care of themselves anymore, and the spouse or other loved one takes the responsibility of being the caregiver instead of putting them into an elderly home.

The area which is often overlooked is the 15% that take care of children. These include cases of mentally handicapped or otherwise disabled children. There are also the rarer, but equally important cases of children with serious illnesses, for example cancer. People often forget that when being caregiver of one’s child, usually the ”job” lasts for the rest of their lives, not only a few years like in many cases of being a caregiver for elderly. Now I’ll go on to introduce our imaginary example family, whose daily life we’ll be also exploring in the upcoming blogposts.