Community home-based care programme: A marginalised key community resource

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the experiences and challenges facing community home-based caregivers in their endeavour to provide a critical key community service. It is a fact that community home-based care programmes provide a critical service to terminally ill patients who would otherwise have little access to any form of assistance. Critical as their role may be, caregivers continue to be marginalised. Coupled with the physical and emotional cost of providing care that is unpaid and undervalued, this poses a challenge to them. The qualitative study was conducted throughout the North West province of South Africa, utilising caregivers as participants.