Although family and informal caregivers make up 78% of the long-term care system in the United States, geriatric care managers and aging professionals have not focused on them . The actual backbone that supports the the aging client is the unpaid family caregiver .
Family caregivers’ are overwhelmed by caregiver burnout, stress and overload. Aging professionals and geriatric care managers need to begin to see caregivers and care receivers as one organism. Caregivers are part of a homeostatic system including the care receiver and one cannot be separated from the other. If the caregiver’s functional and psychosocial needs go unmet then the whole care plan falls apart. So the aging professional needs to take a whole-family approach and see that they have multiple clients, including the older person and the family caregivers. This they need to do a caregiver assessment