Abstract:

Providing care for a loved one with a disability, long-term illness or frailty due to age is central to many relationships. There are around 2.65 million family and friend carers in Australia, more than one third (36.6%) of whom provide care for their partner. Caring is most often motivated by a sense of family responsibility (62.8%), or due to a feeling of emotional obligation (41.8%) (ABS 2019).

Providing care for a loved one, however, can have significant negative impacts on the social connectedness of carers and on their relationships with others. Data from the Carers NSW 2020 National Carer Survey shows that almost a third of carers (31%) are highly socially isolated, and another 25% have only low levels of social support. Correspondingly, carers have very low levels of relationship satisfaction with their partners, family, and friends. The personal wellbeing of carers is strongly correlated with relationship satisfaction.

On average, carers rate their satisfaction with their partner relationships at 50% (Carers NSW 2020), compared with 83% of all Australian couples (Wilkins et al 2019). Interestingly, the Carer Survey data shows that carers are significantly more satisfied with the relationship with their partner when the partner is the care recipient.

Although most carers (58%) feel that their caring role is recognised by their family, these results demonstrate the need for service providers to support carers and their families in their relationships, not only with the care recipient, but with each other.