In this Scripps News Reports special, we investigate a quiet but widespread problem that tens of millions of Americans face: Caring for a loved one while being unable to completely care for themselves.
About 53 million Americans are caregivers, and the count is growing as the population ages. Caregivers are largely unpaid, but still contribute roughly $600 billion annually across 36 billion hours of care.
These people are often faceless and nameless in the grand scheme, except to those friends and loved ones they're caring for.
Scripps News sits down with some of them — who might already be familiar faces to you — to hear their stories about caring for family, struggling with finances and working to change the policies that affect millions of people like them every day.
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