Mistreatment of Caregivers: What to Do to Protect the Rights and Interests of Long-Term Care Workers
제목
Mistreatment of Caregivers: What to Do to Protect the Rights and Interests of Long-Term Care Workers
저자
Namkung, Eun Ha
; Go, Eun-ah
발행연도
2022-05-20
발행기관
Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs
인용정보
Research in Brief, vol. 98, pp. 1 - 9
초록
Care services are essential to protecting people’s lives and health and to keeping society functioning well even in crisis situations like covid-19. As the covid-19 pandemic protracts, the question of what to do to protect the rights and interests of long-term care workers has gained added importance. The government has set up in 2020 a set of multi-ministerial support measures for “essential workers” who play indispensable roles in times of the covid-19 pandemic. The workforce for whom the government intends to provide support by those measures include care assistants, who account for most of long-term caregivers. Despite their being a workforce whose services are regarded as essential for the life and physical wellbeing of infirm older persons, caregivers have suffered poor working conditions and mistreatment since well before the covid-19 pandemic. Not only is this a problem for the caregivers themselves. It is a problem also for the quality of care they deliver. The 2019 Long-term Care Survey found that nearly half of all long-term care workers were on an hourly contract, working under poor employment conditions. A substantial percentage of respondents in the survey reported having experienced continued mistreatment from care recipients and their families, in the forms of sexual harassment, verbal/physical violence, and demands for taking on tasks beyond their job scope. Furthermore, a large percentage of long-term care workers were found to have, since the covid-19 pandemic, suffered added anxiety due to cohort isolation, increased risk of infection, job interruption and income loss. Violence and mistreatment toward long-term care workers could increase their job stress and turnover . Care workers’ job stress arising from being mistreated can lead to a quality decline in the services they provide . This study examines, based on the 2021 Survey for Improving the Working Conditions of Long-Term Caregivers, the current state of mistreatment toward care workers and the impact the covid-19 pandemic has had on this essential workforce.
