“Rising life expectancy makes people save on home care”

The rising cost of living due to inflation and energy prices is encouraging people with care needs to save on hours of home care. The VRT reports this on Saturday morning and home care organization Familiehulp confirms the news.

For the first half of 2022, the organization noted that there was an average decrease of 7.7 percent in hours of family care per customer compared to previous years. The decrease is greater for new customers than for existing customers.

When this figure was updated – which includes the summer months – in September, the decline has more or less stabilized at -7 percent. In addition, there is a decrease of more than 100,000 customer hours at Familiehulp. This decline can be seen everywhere, but is greatest among lower incomes and smallest among higher incomes.

The decreasing number of hours of home care is offset by an 8.6 percent increase in the number of customer inquiries in the first half of the year compared to a year earlier. The number of new family care customers helped increased by 9 percent.

Impact on well-being

“So there is an increasing demand for care, but a decreasing use of care per customer. This declining use of care has an impact on the well-being of the person in question: the care that Familiehulp provides is not complex medical care, but basic support, such as personal hygiene, which ensures that people spend their day in a dignified manner. On the contrary, family care is seen as accessible, essential care for (often) very vulnerable people who still live in their home environment,” reports Familiehulp.

“Unfortunately, we note that due to the increasing costs – think of the energy bill, the rising prices in the shops – there is a difference between what customers need in terms of care and what they ask for, simply because they can no longer or do not want to pay for it. ”, says Bart Tirez, regional director at Familiehulp Leuven, at the VRT. “We see this with both new and existing customers.”