Is family caregiving easier in Sri Lanka?
Left: 104 years old man is singing a traditional song for us
Right: a women's room in an aged care outside of Colombo
It takes so much effort to help elders to remain their own homes in our society today. I thought that some countries that respect elders may have easier situation for providing care at home with the help of others. However, the problems and concerns that family caregivers face everyday seem to be the same everywhere… Most of the elders in Sri Lanka are still taken care of by family, relatives, and neighbors. Moreover, due to the modernization and urbanization of our society, the concerns which are addressed by caregivers Sri Lanka are almost identical to the those in Japan and USA.
The main concerns of Sri Lankan are:
“Women have professional careers and do not have time to care for elders.”
“Children live in urban area due to their jobs, and it makes it difficult for them to care for their parents who prefer staying at their own homes in rural area.”
“There are not enough services available that benefit middle income Sri Lankan to care for their parents at home.”
“There is not enough space available for elderly parents to live in a small house.”
At this moment, people in Sri Lanka do everything they can do to take care of their own parents. While they mentioned how difficult it is to care for their parents at home, they also said "it is not easy, but we just have to find the way and do it. I cannot imagine anyone who can refuse to take care of their parents, becuase that is what we have to do."
In order to approach these issues, Sri Lankan should come up with their own solution. When we spoke to the social policy strategists, I felt that they would welcome the idea of providing long term care to elders who do not have family members with whom they could live. Since this country has such wonderful values of “always looking for the opportunities to help and share with others,” I hope that they will choose a different path in the future to avoid the problems that the United State and Japan have experienced through “institutional care,” which deeply disturbed social ties to family, friends, and communities as well as social roles and respect of elders.
