Latinos are the fastest growing group of people 65 and older in the U.S. today. And the number of elderly Latinos with dementia is growing, too. Already, there aren’t enough bilingual, bicultural services to go around. That means increasingly, Latinos are going to have to leave work and other responsibilities to care for ailing family members.
Luis Sierra was already retired when his wife started to need care. That’s not typically the case, said Caroline Gelman, a social worker who does research on Latinos and Alzheimer’s at Hunter College in New York.
“While most caregivers for other groups, particularly white groups, tend to be the spouse, in Latino populations, they often are adult children,” Gelman explained. “That means that they have many competing obligations: work, their own families, their own children.”
A Met Life study found that caregivers 50 and older who leave the work force to care for a family member lose about $300,000 in income and benefits over a lifetime. To keep working, caregivers need adult daycare for their relatives, counseling, and other services. But those often aren’t available in Spanish, Gelman says. READ MORE AT MARKETPLACE
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