A meeting with community leaders and caregivers in Sonoma highlights the silent crisis faced by millions of families caring for elderly adults without paid support.
In a moving community forum held at the Today and Together facilities in Sonoma County, caregivers of elderly relatives, health specialists, and community leaders gathered to bring to light a silent but devastating crisis: the physical, emotional, and financial burden placed on unpaid caregivers. The event exposed the stark reality of thousands of homes where the care of individuals with chronic or neurodegenerative diseases—such as Alzheimer’s or dementia—falls almost exclusively on family members. Through heartbreaking personal testimonies, it became clear how lack of rest, social isolation, and stigma transform caregiving into a daily struggle for survival, where the caregiver’s own needs are completely neglected.
During the meeting, Connie Nakano, Communications Director for the California Department on Aging (CDA), revealed an alarming statistic that illustrates the magnitude of this silent work: more than 7 million people across the state provide unpaid support to family members, spouses, or neighbors, contributing nearly 10 billion hours of informal care annually. She emphasized that most of these caregivers do not consciously identify with the term, perceiving their work simply as “helping a loved one,” which prevents them from accessing existing state support programs, such as the Family Caregiver Support Program and Caregiver Resource Centers.
Complementing this institutional framework, Alexis Glidewell, representative of the Redwood Caregiver Resource Center, emphasized the profound physical and mental health risks associated with chronic unpaid care work. With over two decades of experience in the field, Glidewell highlighted a grim statistic: family caregivers commonly exhibit more severe health declines and even die before the people they care for, due to prolonged stress, anxiety, and the neglect of their own self-care. She also questioned the traditional approach to “self-care” when it becomes dehumanized and demanded solely to keep the person functional as a “tool of the trade.”
During the session, Teresa Ortiz shared one of the most poignant perspectives, recounting the overwhelming challenge of the “sandwich generation”—those who must simultaneously care for their teenage children and their aging and ailing parents. Having cared for her father until his collapse, Teresita considered caring for her 76-year-old mother, who suffered a stroke, all while dealing with her own chronic medical condition—scleroderma—and trying to shield her 17- and 14-year-old children from the stress of home life. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do and go for walks to try and recover; I wish there was a hotline I could call just to vent,” Ortiz confessed, noting the guilt and overwhelming emotional pressure of making decisions alone without collapsing in the process.
For his part, Leonardo Lobato, representative of the La Luz Center, provided a critical and essential perspective on the intersectionality of care within low-income and Latino immigrant communities. Lobato emphasized that for these families, the emotional strain of caregiving is exacerbated by socioeconomic factors such as inflation in the cost of basic goods, precarious employment in local industries like winemaking, and the language barrier. He also highlighted the complex situation of older adults who emigrated decades ago and who now age in complete isolation after leaving their families in their countries of origin, becoming an invisible and extremely vulnerable population.
The forum also served to powerfully highlight the tragic paradox surrounding family caregivers: the high rate of morbidity and mortality they experience due to prolonged chronic stress. Representatives from organizations such as the Redwood Caregiver Resource Center emphasized the crucial need to treat caregivers as “second patients,” as their health often deteriorates faster than that of the family member they care for. The lack of respite care, coupled with the false cultural notion that asking for help or self-care is selfish, condemns thousands of people—the vast majority of whom are women—to suffer high levels of depression, anxiety, and psychosomatic illnesses.
Faced with this scenario, experts and panelists agreed on the urgent need to restructure the public and community response by implementing comprehensive support models and resource navigation. Institutions such as the California Department on Aging and local agencies highlighted the existence of helplines like 565-INFO and adult day care centers like Today and Together, which offer safe environments that break the isolation of the patient and restore autonomy to the caregiver. However, it was emphasized that the real challenge lies in overcoming the stigma and ensuring that society recognizes caregiving as a community responsibility, not as an individual or exclusively family burden.
Finally, the meeting concluded with an urgent call to the media and public institutions to amplify these narratives and educate the public. Given that demographic projections indicate that by 2030 more than 35% of Sonoma County’s population will be over 60 years old, leaders warned that the unpaid support network will collapse if funding for affordable respite care programs and subsidies is not allocated. Promoting a culture that celebrates and supports dignified aging, while ensuring that no caregiver has to sacrifice their own health or livelihood, is emerging as one of the most imperative ethical and public health challenges of our time.