The assistance or care of an elderly person (sick or disabled), member of a family, friend or client, is intended to allow the recipient an optimal level of independence. The help can be instrumental or material (practical, by hand), affective, financial or any other that the recipient considers of value or necessity. It varies in intensity and duration: from a regular or sporadic daily hour, to 24 hours a day for days or years. In Spain, assistance providers, paid or unpaid, have increased strongly in recent years and will continue in the next few years, as the number of elderly has increased and consequently that of those with a disability.
The majority of help for the elderly is informal, that is, that provided by a family member and friend, without remuneration, and is preferred by those who need it. Formal assistance, usually remunerated, is usually associated with some service provider organization and is more common among those who live alone. Volunteers (not paid) who are under an organization can be considered within the formal sector. In informal help, an individual in the family is usually the one who usually ends up being the main person who assumes the most responsibility, for convenience or because he chose it. It is usually the one who lives closest, starting with the spouse or a non-emancipated child and continuing with the rest of the children, relatives and other people. Bibliographic
| title = | year = 1996 | Journal = Encyclopedia of Gerontology | volume = | number = | id = | url =}}
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