Kupuna Caregivers Program deserves full funding

In Hawaiʻi, approximately 247,000 people serve as family caregivers. Across the United States, there are some 4 million home-care workers and caregivers providing professional elder care, and some 52 million family care-givers: people who are providing up to 20 hours a week of care for their family members on top of full-time jobs and other commitments.

This is a huge number of people dealing with the pressures of working and holding down a job to support their family while also taking care of aging loved ones. Managing that pressure is one of the primary pain-points that working families in this country are dealing with today.

In Hawaiʻi, approximately 247,000 people serve as family caregivers.

At the same time, millennials are entering their 30s and having children. There are 4 million babies being born every year with virtually no childcare infrastructure either to support these new families. The result is a sandwiching effect on the millennial generation, whereby working age adults are being pressured from both sides by the demands of childcare and elder care with no infrastructure or support.

This is a national problem we must address, and Hawaii has an opportunity—and an imperative need—to take the lead on finding compassionate, effective solutions. Because Hawaiʻi is a state that is aging quickly. By 2020, there will be 300,000 people over the age of 65 here in Hawaiʻi.

When we think of infrastructure, we think of roads and bridges and pipes and fiberoptic cables. But, in the 21st century when 75 percent of children are growing up in households where all of the adults are working outside the home, we actually need a whole new infrastructure to support people while they care for their families.

The law that established the Kūpuna Caregivers Fund is a groundbreaking piece of legislation—the first of its kind in the country. Our state is the first state to invest in the caregiving infrastructure; to invest in the ability of working families to keep their loved ones at home instead of putting them in institutions, and insuring that the workforce that is helping to support that is fairly compensated. It is an investment in both the workers and the families.

We should be proud. But there is more that must be done.