Cuidadoras Domiciliares em Saúde e Responsabilização Familiar: as vozes quase nunca ouvidas (Home caregivers in healthcare and family responsibility: voices rarely heard)

Abstract

The growth of privatization of healthcare, driven by the expansion of homecare programs, based on official and legal social policy guidelines, has revealed processes that hold families responsible, in particular women. The objective of this article is to analyze the process of holding families responsible for healthcare under a hospital's "Interdisciplinary Homecare Program". This study, of an exploratory and qualitative character, involved interviews with the family caregivers in this program. The results point to difficulties and lack of support from the healthcare network and other social policies in the municipalities where the families live, the lack of public polices for the service of caregivers and a reality of making women responsible for and overburdened with family care.