Caring for your ageing parents can be rewarding, but there’s no denying there are challenges.
While you do your best to look out for them and provide the support they need to stay as independent as possible, balancing caregiving with other parts of your life can be emotionally draining and physically demanding. It’s perfectly normal for caregivers supporting their older or elderly parents to struggle with reconciling conflicting emotions and often experience shame or guilt as a result.
In this guide for caregivers, we’ll discuss why caring can be overwhelming, common challenges, and provide tips to make it more manageable. We’ll also help you recognise when it may be time to consider other care options, such as assisted living.
Why caring for an ageing parent can feel overwhelming
Unpaid caregiving is far more common than many of us realise, and some people might not even know they’re doing it. Eight out of 100 people in the UK are ‘informal’ carers, meaning they care for someone in an unpaid setting. Of all informal carers, 42% care for parents who either live in the same household or in their own home.
If you regularly support an ageing parent with tasks such as transportation, personal care, medication, and meals, these are all caregiving responsibilities. You don’t have to be doing it full time for it to count as caregiving. Lots of people have to do so alongside work, childcare, and other parts of their lives. This balance can be difficult, as you only have so many hours in a day, so much money, and so much energy.
As much as you love supporting your parents, just one thing needs to become more demanding than usual, and then everything can feel out of control.
Common challenges family carers face
The impact of caregiving varies from person to person, but there are six common themes many caregivers experience.
1. Emotional challenges
Caregiving evokes all sorts of emotions. Some are good feelings, like satisfaction that you’ve made your parent’s day a little bit better. But quite often, emotions can be difficult to face.
- Grief: You might grieve things, such as the life you thought you would be leading instead of spending time on care, or feel sad about no longer having the parent you grew up with.
- Stress: Caregiving can be stressful, with lots of tasks piling up and a lot to learn to ensure you’re providing the best support possible.
- Resentment: Some people feel resentful for having to look after their parents, particularly if they’re resistant to support and make it hard for you to help them.
- Guilt: Feeling guilty is common, as you feel bad about getting angry and resentful, and you try to convince yourself that you should just be grateful to have your parents around.
Any feelings you experience are valid, and you shouldn’t feel bad about not enjoying caregiving duties. Experiencing any of these feelings doesn’t mean you love your parents any less.
It’s not unusual for people to try to overcompensate for the negative feelings by putting even more effort in, but this can contribute to caregiver burnout.
2. Physical exhaustion
As the average life expectancy increases, people are caring for their parents later in their own lives as well. In fact, the most common age group of people caring for their parents in England and Wales are aged between 55-59. We don’t have as much energy in our 50s as we do in our younger years, and we might have our own health needs regardless of age. Add caregiving on top of this, and exhaustion and fatigue can quickly develop.
3. Balancing work and family
The various responsibilities involved in caregiving slowly build up and become a hidden labour in your life. If you’re employed and have children or grandchildren to look after, it can end up feeling like you’re working two and a half full-time jobs with no time for yourself.
You’re just one person, and you can't keep every aspect of your life running completely smoothly when you’re stretched too thin.
4. Financial pressures
Tracking and managing your finances while balancing caregiving can be difficult. You might pick up groceries for your parents along with your own, buy fuel to drive them to appointments, or pay to install an adaptation. Caring might take up so much of your time that you need to cut back your work hours.
Keeping a detailed record of incoming and outgoing costs is time-consuming in itself, and probably not something you always have front of mind. But providing care can affect personal finances, with 49% of carers taking out loans or cutting back on essentials to save costs.
5. Caring from a distance
Looking after mum or dad doesn’t necessarily mean doing so in person. If you live further away and moving them closer isn’t an option, you might be managing carers, calling once or twice a day to check in, and generally monitoring their health and life, which can be demanding.
Arranging care for them, even when you live farther away, is just as important. Assisted living is ideal for older people living independently, as you can rest assured that support is always on hand, and you don’t need to worry about parents being alone.
6. Managing increasing care needs
Care needs will evolve over time as your parents age, their mobility slows, and they need a bit more help managing everyday life. It can be very gradual, and you might not even notice the support you provide increasing until you look back at previous years or feel other parts of your life suffer as a result.
How to recognise caregiver burnout
People are not machines, and actually we’re a lot more resilient. When a machine burns out, it’ll just stop working. When a person burns out, they write it off as stress and just carry on, and it’s not always obvious they’re struggling. Early recognition is key to protecting the wellbeing of the caregiver and their loved one.
There will be signs of burnout, which can present as behavioural, physical, emotional, or a combination of these.
Behavioural
- Depending on food or alcohol to cope.
- Forgetfulness and lower concentration.
- Shorter fuse when it comes to patience.
Physical
- Trouble sleeping.
- Fatigue and exhaustion.
- Unexplained pain or aches.
Emotional
- Lack of interest in hobbies or social activities.
- Low mood, such as anxiety, depression, and irritability.
- Feelings of hopelessness or dissociation.
If you’re experiencing any of these burnout symptoms on a regular basis, it’s time to consider adjusting how caregiving fits into your life.
Ways to make caring for parents more manageable
If you’re overwhelmed, it can be hard to find avenues to make caring feel more balanced:
- Share the load: Lean on other family members or visiting carers so the full responsibility doesn’t fall solely on you.
- Local support: Charities and local authorities offer a range of support programmes, so it’s worth researching what’s available in your area.
- Community groups: Local support groups allow you to come together with people in similar situations and chat in an informal setting.
- External care: Respite care or assisted living allows you to take a break while professionals manage your loved one’s care.
- Look after yourself: Make time for yourself, and recognise when it’s time for you to seek external support, whether that be help with care or visiting your GP.
When is it time to consider additional support?
Considering external help to care for your parent is never a sign of failure. There are a multitude of reasons you might be thinking about reaching out, such as:
- Safety concerns: Maybe your loved one is falling more often, the stairs in their house are too steep for them to climb safely, or you’re concerned about their physical well-being if you leave to go back to your own home each night.
- Medication management: If your loved one takes multiple medications, it can be hard to know if they’ve remembered to take the right dosage at the right time without your supervision.
- Loneliness: Isolation and loneliness are an unfortunate reality for many older people. Though you try your best to keep your loved one company, you likely have other responsibilities to manage, and you worry they’re becoming lonely.
- Increasing care needs: As your loved one ages, the level of support they need might increase, which can become difficult to manage alongside your own work, children, and home life.
- Your own health is deteriorating: Health issues can affect us at any age. You could fall ill, become injured, or develop a condition that prevents you from fulfilling caregiving duties.
Understanding your care options
Seeking outside help to reduce caregiving pressures is one of the best things you can do for yourself and your loved one. You can relax knowing they have support when they need it, without feeling guilty about prioritising your well-being.
There are plenty of care options available, and the right one for your loved one will depend on their current needs and how long you want the support for. Some care options are more temporary, while others are designed to be long-term. It’s important to talk to your parents about their needs so they can be fully involved in the decision-making process.
| Care option | How it works | Longevity |
| Home care | Professional carers visit your loved one at home to provide support. This can be daily, weekly, or as often as needed. | Can be in place for life, unless it becomes unsafe for them to live at home. |
| Live-in care | Professional carers move in with your parent to provide constant support. | Can be in place for life, unless it becomes unsafe for them to live at home. |
| Respite care | Temporary care designed to give primary caregivers a break. This can be provided at home, in a care home, or at day centres depending on need. | Very flexible and can be scaled up or down as needed. |
| Care homes | Your loved one moves into a room at a residential care home where support staff are on hand to provide personal and domestic care. | Can be for life, unless they develop a condition that requires specialist nursing care. |
| Assisted living | Your loved one moves into their own private home in a dedicated assisted living development, where professional carers provide a range of services on a flexible basis. | Designed to support people for life, unless they develop a medical need that requires nursing care or round-the-clock support. |
How assisted living supports older people and their family caregivers
If you take just one thing away from this guide, know you don’t have to manage caregiving on your own. Support is available to ease pressures and help you do what’s right for your loved ones.
Assisted living at our Retirement Living Plus developments is designed to make later life easier, with care and support services available as and when they’re needed. You can hand over the caring responsibilities to our professional team, with the peace of mind that your loved one will receive flexible support designed to help them now and in the future.
Learn more about our Retirement Living Plus developments by contacting us online or calling us on 0800 201 4811. A member of our lovely team will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have, such as whether the flexibility of a rental would be more suitable for your circumstances, or whether a purchased home would provide the long-term support you need.
We also offer Moving Made Easy packages to help your loved one transition to a new home more easily. Our services include decluttering, packing, and removals services to take the stress out of moving.
