Informal care trajectories: developments in care demands, intensity and complexity over the course of care episodes

In response to the dominant narrative that informal care episodes become increasingly heavy over time, this study empirically identifies distinct informal care trajectories in terms of developments in care demands (care receivers’ health), intensity (number of hours) and complexity (number and type of tasks) over the course of a care episode. Latent class analysis on 5,595 informal care episodes among 2,884 Dutch carers identified a ‘stable trajectory’ (41 per cent) and ‘decrease trajectory’ (22 per cent) apart from an ‘increase trajectory’ (37 per cent). The trajectories were related to care receivers’ characteristics (age), carers’ difficulty of saying ‘no’ (relationship and obligation) and changes in the care context (living situation).