How to organize family caregiving without disappearing from your own life
Betti Kleemann has an important client meeting. It is due to start in half an hour. Then her phone rings.
Her mother is on the line, distraught: Betti’s father has disappeared. He has dementia and may no longer know where he is or how to get home.
“What do you choose in a moment like that?” Betti asks, looking back. For her, the answer was clear: her family and her father. Her client was understanding. But that cannot be taken for granted.
Moments like this reveal what family caregiving really means. It is not another appointment you can squeeze in somewhere between work, groceries, and exercise. It takes over your entire day — suddenly, relentlessly, and usually when everything is already full.
And more often than not, it is women who are expected to keep functioning.
It does not always begin with a diagnosis
Betti’s father did not become dependent on care overnight. It gradually crept into the family’s life.
He began doing things that Betti and her mother found unusual. At first, they seemed like harmless moments of forgetfulness. Over time, however, it became clear that something more serious was happening.
Betti’s mother initially did not want to hear it. Her father also resisted seeing a doctor for a long time. It took several years before the family finally received the diagnosis: dementia.
But even the diagnosis did not come with a clear care plan. There was no roadmap, no central point of contact, and no list of the next ten steps. Betti’s parents continued to live in Bad Homburg while she lived in Frankfurt, around 20 kilometers away — close enough to be called in constantly, yet far enough for every emergency to become a logistical operation.
When the police found her father disoriented, it was clear that something had to change. But what exactly? Family caregiving comes with many things. An onboarding process is not one of them.
Before caregiving becomes a second job: four questions
Who coordinates — and who takes responsibility for what?
Assign doctor communication, applications, finances, shopping, and visits to specific people.
Where does professional guidance begin?
Depending on your country of residence, contact a municipal care service, health or long-term care insurer, patient organization, or family caregiver association.
What kind of support does the family need?
Support for the person receiving care and relief for the caregiver are not automatically the same thing.
What are you unable to take on?
Set your limits before temporary help turns into permanent responsibility.
The real strain often happens around the care itself
For Betti and her mother, one thing was certain: her father should remain at home. During the COVID-19 pandemic, her parents eventually moved into a separate apartment in Betti and her husband’s house. That allowed the family to share the responsibility.
The intensive phase of care lasted seven to eight years. Betti continued working as a management consultant. Alongside client meetings, there were doctor’s appointments, applications, coordination, and sudden emergencies.
“You always felt guilty,” she says. At work, because something might be happening at home. With her partner or friends, because yet another plan had to be canceled. And with her father, because even a great deal of time together never seemed quite enough.
Yet she does not remember only the difficult moments. She used to take her father jogging in his wheelchair. Eventually, everyone in the village knew the two of them. Those moments might never have existed without the experience of caring for him.
Caregiving can create closeness. But closeness requires time — and that time disappears when one family member is expected to be caregiver, appointment manager, administrator, and emergency hotline all at once.
A system with plenty of support — but no clear way in
Care services exist. So do counseling centers, home-care providers, insurance benefits, associations, and support groups. The problem is that anyone entering the system must first work out which service is needed, when it is needed, and how to access it.
Betti describes the search as a scavenger hunt through a maze. The information exists somewhere. It is just rarely available where an exhausted family member needs it most.
This is not only a German issue. The European Institute for Gender Equality’s 2024 CARE Survey asked more than 65,000 people across all 27 EU member states how unpaid care work affects everyday life, employment, and well-being.
For women in midlife, caring for a relative often arrives during an already crowded period: professional responsibility, children of their own, a relationship, and the need to protect their financial future. When women automatically reduce their working hours, they may solve an immediate family problem while creating a longer-term income or pension problem.
The system does work. Part of its cost simply never appears in any official budget.
Pflegana grew out of this experience
Betti developed the idea for Pflegana several years after her father died. Her godmother had become seriously ill. Her son temporarily closed his trade business, while her daughter took leave from work. Both largely put their lives on hold to care for their mother.
For Betti, one thing was clear: this could not remain the only solution.
Pflegana is a digital platform she developed to actively take over administrative processes for family caregivers, such as preparing applications and documents or coordinating with home-care providers. Its official website describes the approach as AI-powered care process automation.
At the time of the interview, the version for family caregivers was still in development. The plan is for the platform not merely to remind users about tasks, but to prepare or initiate the relevant processes. If someone is going into the hospital, for example, the system could notify the home-care provider, prepare documents, and create an appropriate packing list.
“Pflegana is really solving a time problem — and a guilt problem,” Betti says.
A digital platform cannot care for a human being. But it may help ensure that the daughter sitting beside a hospital bed is not also searching for the correct form.
About Pflegana
Pflegana is a German AI-powered platform designed to make everyday care responsibilities easier for family caregivers. Instead of only providing information, it is intended to actively handle administrative processes such as preparing applications and arranging appointments with home-care providers.
The startup is currently raising funding to continue development and deliver its minimum viable product, or MVP, in September 2026.
Asking for help is not an admission of failure
Betti’s most important insight is simple: support needs to begin earlier.
Her mother resisted accepting outside help for a long time. She knew her husband best and did not want to hand over responsibility. That is understandable — but almost impossible to sustain over time.
Family caregiving does not improve when one person tries to do everything alone. It improves when responsibilities are divided, professional services are included, and personal limits are clearly stated.
The goal should not be to make women even more resilient. It should be to prevent them from disappearing from their own lives while caring for someone else.
Family members are not there to invisibly repair the gaps in a failing care system. Above all, they should be allowed to remain family.
Caregiving in Europe: women carry the consequences
- 13% of women providing care spend more than 35 hours a week on it, compared with 10% of men.
- Almost one in three employed women with care responsibilities regularly struggles to combine work and caregiving.
- Women over 65 in the EU receive pensions that are, on average, 24.5% lower than men’s. Part-time work and career breaks linked to unpaid care contribute to that gap.
In other words: Women give more time to care — and often continue paying the price in retirement.
Sources: EIGE and Eurostat, 2024 data