Insights Into The Covid-19 Church Era –Part XXVI
Welcome to the caregiver’s world. If a family member has cancer, Alzheimer, dementia, a chronic illness or a mental illness, being their caregiver is draining and life altering. What happens when the organizations you count upon fail? Everything falls back on you, the caregiver. When schools shut down, the parent, the caregiver, became a fulltime babysitter, part time tutor, a medical assistant for scrapes and bruises, a tooth fairy, a playmate, a cafeteria worker, and their child’s best and only friend when quarantined or isolated. Totally overwhelmed, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused parents to wear all kinds of hats, but what do parents do when systems and institution fail them? You go into crisis survival mode or give up.
Mental Health System:
Having a family member with a mental health diagnosis, I’ve learned that when there is system failure, care will always fall back on the caregiver. When a loved one with a mental disorder goes to an emergency room, they can’t get help unless they convince the E.R. doctor that they are in danger of hurting themselves or someone else. In spite of medication needing two weeks to stabilize, they are released in three days, adding to your life’s burden and being overwhelmed.
Current Health Insurance System:
Health Insurance is suppose to help you survive, but ironically, you are helping the Health Insurance Industry to survive by paying high premiums, co-pays, enormous deductibles, while signing your financial life away if your insurance company doesn’t pay your bill. It falls back into the caregiver’s lap, not the health insurers. The institution is broken
Current Educational System
Covid-19 closed all schools, forcing educators to teach virtually. Parents, now full time caregivers while working at home, became tutors trying to understand “new math’, physics, chemistry, and a foreign language. Responsibility for a child’s education was a shared experience. Single and low income parents wonder how they will handle school-at-home while having to return to work. They can’t be at two places at the same time and they can’t afford professional childcare. Even if they could, childcare is still closed! The system is broken.
It Falls Back on Caregiver
When the mental health system fails, all responsibility falls on the caregiver. If you parent a disabled child, when the schools and supportive service close, you are responsible for your child’s care. When systems and institutions fail or go bankrupt, care always falls into the caregiver’s lap. With uncertainty of the future laying on the horizon, what are caregivers to do except bite the bullet?
In the next set of blogs, we will look at some possible new options, new wineskins, new structures we might try to alleviate the pressures caused by institution breakdowns. The 1st century church met many challenges, yet they boasted, “There was not a needy person among them,” How did they meet needs?” All who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles’ feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need.” (Acts 4:34-35) They found solutions. In our next two blogs we will look at some possible solutions to current Covie-19 challenges.