6.4 COUNTED UNPAID CARE WORK TIME
6.4.1 Daily time spent on unpaid care work
When reading the findings in this section it must be borne in mind that study households were selected for the presence of terminally ill people and data was collected on specific intensive illness periods, therefore the time spent looking after these ill people is not representative of the time spent in HBC in KwaZulu-Natal in general. Table 6.1 shows the daily time in hours spent on unpaid care work per individual ill person (Appendix H provides greater detail on the daily time taken per care activity per ill person). On average 10.1 hours are spent daily caring for the ill people by household members. This is longer than the average paid working day of eight hours.
This time ranges from 3.0 hours to 25.8 hours per day per ill person. It is possible for the total
care time per day to exceed 24 hours, because the total care time per ill person was counted per day and this usually constituted care by more than one main or household caregiver. In the Mbongeni and Ndaba households there were four and five people providing care respectively.
Apart from these cases, the total time spent in unpaid care work in other households did not exceed 14.0 hours.
Table 6.1: Daily time spent in unpaid care work for an ill person by household and non-household members (hours)
Ill person Main care- giver 1
Main care- giver 2
Other female
HH member
/s
Other male
HH member
/s
Total HH
Total non-HH
HH &
non-HH
Yengwa 8.8 n/a 2.6 1.7 13.0 0.0 13.0
Sibiyo 5.5 2.3 0.0 0.0 7.8 0.2 8.0
Khubona 3.1 n/a 0.0 0.4 3.5 0.0 3.5
Luthuli 2.1 0.8 0.0 0.0 3.0 0.0 3.0
Mfeka 4.2 n/a 0.6 0.0 4.8 0.0 4.8
Mncube 5.6 n/a 0.0 0.0 5.6 0.0 5.6
Thwala 12.4 n/a 1.6 0.0 14.0 0.0 14.0
Cibane 10.9 n/a 0.0 0.0 10.9 0.0 10.9
Mngadi 3.4 8.0 0.0 0.0 11.4 0.0 11.4
Mbongeni 15.5 n/a 10.3 0.0 25.8 9.6 35.4
Ngidi-S 12.1 n/a 0.0 0.0 12.1 0.0 12.1
Ngidi-Z 8.6 n/a 0.0 0.0 8.6 0.0 8.6
Ndaba 11.5 n/a 7.3 2.9 21.7 10.7 32.4
Madondo 10.1 n/a 0.0 1.4 11.5 0.0 11.5
Shibe 3.2 n/a 0.0 0.0 3.2 0.0 3.2
Tembe 8.4 n/a 0.0 0.0 8.4 0.3 8.7
Dladla 7.1 n/a 0.0 0.0 7.1 0.0 7.1
Average 8.4 1.3 0.4 10.1 1.2 11.4
Note: HH=household; totals may not add up due to rounding; care time for the two ill people in the Ngidi household was counted per ill person; for average caregiving time for main caregiver 1 and main caregiver 2, where there was more than one main caregiver, caregiving time was totalled per ill person and then averaged across all ill people
In three households there were two main caregivers and in the remainder there was one. The average hours spent providing unpaid care by main caregivers across ill people is 8.4 hours per day or 58.8 hours per week – over the maximum 45 ordinary hours of work per week stipulated in the Basic Conditions of Employment Act. Care provided by main caregivers constitutes the bulk (90 percent) of care provision time across ill people. In five households the main
caregiver(s) were the only people providing care (in one of these households there were two main caregivers, and in one of these households there were two ill people). Therefore in a number of households in which care took place the responsibility for care and the actual care provision itself fell on one person only. In half of the households, more than one household member provided care to the ill person. It is noteworthy that of all main caregivers the time spent providing unpaid care was the least for the only male main caregiver.
In six of the households one or more female household members assisted the main caregiver in care provision. The daily hours spent caring by female household members other than main caregivers ranged from 1.7 minutes to 10.3 hours per ill person. The average hours spent providing unpaid care to ill people across households by female household members (that is female main caregivers and female household members who were not main caregivers) was 9.7 hours – that is, 96 percent of all household time spent in unpaid care work. Clearly, women within homes in KwaZulu-Natal are accounting for the bulk of the time spent providing care for terminally ill people.
Across all households males spent a marginal amount of time providing care for ill people, and the picture was not substantially different if only the households in which males provide care were considered. In the five households in which males provided care, the average time spent on care provision by males was 1.4 hours per ill person. Interestingly, three of the four male
household members who assisted in care provision individually spent more time providing care per ill person than the one main caregiver who was male (50.2 minutes). It is important to remember that caregivers were defined as being main caregivers by household members, so whether main caregivers spent more or less time caring than other household members should not be a consideration.
In terms of the contribution of non-household members, in seven of the 16 households external help was received, and only in one of these households was this help received from a male.
Therefore the bulk of non-household members who provided some form of assistance were female. Across all households, the average daily time spent caring by non-household members was 1.2 hours per ill person. Interestingly this was greater on average than the time spent caring by male household members. Therefore, while non-household members were making a time contribution towards the care of ill people within the home, this was limited in comparison with the contribution of household members, especially females.
Finally, the average daily time spent providing care for an ill person within the home by both household and non-household members amounted to 11.4 hours. The total time spent caring by household and non-household members for an ill person ranged from 3.0 hours per day to 35.4 hours per day.