Strengthening family caregivers
GAT Director Prof. Hoff will deliver a keynote address on the topic "VorSORGE: Paths to Sustainability in Long-Term Care" at the German Civil Servants' Federation's symposium on women's policy.
Prof. Dr. Andreas Hoff, director of the “Health, Ageing, Technology” (GAT) Research Institute and head of the part-time Master's degree programme in Social Gerontology, delivered a keynote address on April 16, 2024, in Berlin at the 18th Women’s Policy Symposium of the German Civil Servants’ Federation (dbb) in Berlin, titled “VorSORGE: Paths to Sustainability in Long-Term Care Amid Demographic Change.”
The main goal of the conference — which drew significant attention with more than 200 female participants and was held under the theme “Family, Care Work, Poverty in Old Age—The CARE Side of the Coin,” was to comprehensively explain the connection between unpaid care work over the course of a person’s life (raising children, caring for older people) and poverty in old age, a problem that disproportionately affects women. In addition to evidence-based analysis, the focus was on potential solutions in the workplace and in policy. Prof. Hoff—not least in his capacity as vice chair of the independent advisory board on balancing caregiving and work—proposed strengthening the resilience of family caregivers through the following measures:
- Recognition of caregiving as a societal responsibility, which includes a comprehensive network of locally accessible support structures for family caregivers, such as day care facilities.
- A more equitable distribution of caregiving responsibilities between women and men, enabling both genders to balance caregiving and work.
- Recognizing the successful reconciliation of caregiving and work as a measure to secure a skilled workforce and, therefore, as an opportunity for companies.
- Reducing the bureaucracy involved in the application process for care support benefits.
- Proactive, preventive support for family caregivers (time off, health retreats, counseling, prevention courses, preventive medical treatment)
Research into these issues is one of the GAT Institute’s core areas of expertise. Likewise, teaching the fundamentals of social inequality across the life course, sociopolitical logics and structures, as well as measures to combat poverty in old age and the unfair distribution of care work, are among the focal points of the part-time degree program in Social Gerontology.
