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Informal Care and Work in a Caring Society: An integrated approach for a working combination

Two million people combining work and informal care

The Netherlands is a caring society.Approximately 5 million people care for a loved one with physical or mental health problems, thereby providing informal care. About 2 million people combine care with a paid job. These informal caregivers provide help to someone from their immediate social network. They do so not in the context of their profession or business, but because of that personal relationship.

Informal care can be of great value to the caregiver and their loved ones. It brings satisfaction, contributes to personal development and strengthens relationships between people. For most people currently combining work and informal care, this works well. They experience no immediate problems combining one with the other. Yet for a growing group of people, maintaining these combined duties risks burnout and labour market exit. These informal caregivers experience ‘combination pressure’: the sense that working in combination with providing informal care is physically and/or mentally difficult or no longer sustainable. The SER identifies a number of developments that will cause pressure on both work and care to increase further in the near future.