HONG Kong women are becoming caught in the ''caring trap'', endangering their own health in the struggle to look after the handicapped, elderly and small children at home, without adequate support from family or community services, new research has found.
Community care, harnessing family responsibility backed up by formal and informal support, is seen as the best way of looking after the disabled and frail and is a cornerstone of the Government's welfare policy.
But new studies show that it is women who disproportionately shoulder responsibility for such caring.
The strain on these women is so great that close to 40 per cent of those looking after the disabled and nearly a third of those caring for the elderly are at risk of falling prey to mental illness, according to a study by a working group for the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, chaired by Thomas Mulvey.
The study was presented to last week's International Conference on Family and Community Care, hosted by the council. Other papers said the Government should no longer take it for granted that women should shoulder this burden and called for a policy to support caregivers in particular and for a family policy in general.
''Community care in Hong Kong is mostly family care, and that generally means care by women. Informal support is limited,'' says the council's report.