Georgina Nieves-Aponte spends every night reading the Bible in Spanish with her sister Ruth. As Ruth’s primary caregiver, this is part of their routine.
“She’s my best friend,” Nieves-Aponte said about Ruth. “She’s a very good sister, and all that I do is for her, because I love her so much.”
Caregiving is Nieves-Aponte’s passion. She works as a personal care assistant for others, as well as her sister.
“I want to work in the medical field and be a [licensed practical nurse] and work in the hospital,” Nieves-Aponte said, “but my sister needs somebody.”
Nieves-Aponte did not disclose her sister’s medical conditions to protect her sister’s private health information.
Nieves-Aponte is 58 years old. Her sister, Ruth, is 59. With retirement age around the corner, Nieves-Aponte said the topic of caregiving alternatives for the future is a difficult one.
“I discuss with my sister in case she can get worse and I won't be able to take care of her,” Nieves-Aponte said, “but she refuses to accept any type of options.”
Despite her medical background, Nieves-Aponte said it’s also hard on her to even consider the idea.
“It's not easy for a family member who really loves another family member to say, ‘Oh, we're going to sign all the paperwork so you can move to a facility and they will take care of you,’” she said.
As a Puerto Rican woman, Nieves-Aponte holds a core belief about family that is valued among many Latinos. Because of this sentiment, many Latinos in Connecticut put family first, especially when older family members need care.
“Family is always family. Family is not what I possess, houses, cars, or money. Family is family,” Nieves-Aponte said. “It goes beyond loyalty.”
However, caregivers like Nieves-Aponte find that conversations around caregiving are not often as prioritized as the cultural value of family itself.
Planning ahead, Nieves-Aponte said, is a form of caregiving. That’s why she said she’s briefed her children on her plan for her old age.
“I don't want anybody to get surprised, because you don't know what's going to happen to you tomorrow,” Nieves-Aponte said. “It's hard for my daughter, when I mention it to her, but I said, ‘Well, I just want to let you know that I have all the paperwork done. So in the worst case scenario, you know what to do and how to do it.’”
A look at living arrangements
“Hispanic families are often described as having strong traditions of family, and we actually see that in the data,” said Emma Zang, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University in New Haven.
Zang co-authored a new study on living arrangements for older adults. The study found that the way older Americans live across different communities varies. Often, economics plays a role.
“Older Hispanic adults are less likely to live alone and more likely to live with adult children or other relatives,” Zang said. “So for them, aging in place often means aging within a family network, rather than aging independently.”
These living arrangements matter, Zang said, because they determine who provides care.
“Many older adults in Hispanic families also provide a lot of care to support their grandchildren,” Zang said. “If the family atmosphere is very good, that could be beneficial to both adult children and the grandchildren, but I could also imagine some families, there could be some tension and stress due to economic conditions or some other relational conflicts.”
However, Zang said many government policies for aging elders are designed around the traditional marriages in which spouses live without extended family. The study, for example, points out that people must be married for at least 10 years to be eligible for Social Security spousal benefits.
“Being married and living with one partner is not a dominant pattern anymore,” Zang said. “Ironically, those families who needed support the most turned out to be the disadvantaged group in terms of collecting benefits from the system. So there's a mismatch in terms of the policy design and who has the highest demand.”
In order to better support older adults, especially among Latinos who live in these extended family units and may not discuss caregiving due to cultural norms, Zang said there needs to be more community-based research around aging.
“We really need to listen to the people that we study,” Zang said. “Researchers going out to talk with older adults actually having these challenges, or older adults actually living with extended families, to really understand their day to day life.”
‘It’s OK to plan’
Evelyn Ruiz moved in with her 76-year-old grandmother, Evelyn Ortiz, in Bloomfield after losing her job in New York a couple of years ago. She wanted to focus on building her new business, but then her grandmother, whom she calls Wela, asked her to take care of her.
“When I moved here in January 2024, Wela started to have conversations with me that she wanted me to be her primary caregiver,” Ruiz said. “As of August 2025, things started to go downhill with her health. They found cancer in her pancreas.”
It was then that Ruiz decided to prioritize Wela. She put her business on pause to manage medications, doctor’s appointments, and daily tasks such as grocery shopping and housekeeping.
“It’s so hard,” Ruiz said. “I'm a new business owner, I want to be outside with my community building, but at the same time, I decided to do this because I want to be there for my grandmother.”
Coming into the caregiver role, Ruiz said she didn’t know about the resources out there available to her. It wasn’t until later she found out she could meet the social worker at Wela’s independent living complex, and learned that Connecticut had a paid caregiving program.
“It's all new to me,” Ruiz said.
A spokesperson at the Connecticut Department of Social Services said the agency strives to connect with the state’s Spanish-speaking communities. Chrstine Stuart, deputy director of communications, said the department offers bilingual campaigns, in-language material, and targeted outreach.
My Place CT is a website the department is highlighting as a place where people can find aging and caregiving resources both in English and Spanish.
But the challenges of Wela’s caregiving, Ruiz said, also stem from the fact that her family struggles with talking about the topic.
“I tried to have this conversation with my mom or step dad. They're not with it,” Ruiz said. “We need to do a better job on talking about it, being open, that it's OK to talk about these things and it's OK to plan.”
As a 42-year-old Puerto Rican having been raised in the U.S., Ruiz said she thinks it will be the younger generations who face these same pressures that may break the cycle.
“I just feel like it's just really forced on, and it's just not fair at all,” Ruiz said. “We need to break that generational curse.”
For now, Ruiz is focused on keeping Wela as comfortable as possible, despite how hard her caregiving may be at times.
“I call her a bugaboo. She don't know it, but I’m like, ‘Here goes bugaboo,’ because she's just always on my back,” Ruiz said. “I know I'm gonna miss this, and also I appreciate it at the same time.”
Learn more
MyPlaceCT has a digital toolkit with materials in English and Spanish, offering information for older adults, people with disabilities, and their families and caregivers.
The Connecticut Department of Social Services also has applications in both languages, including:
The Connecticut Department of Social Services website can also be set to the Spanish language at the top right of the page.
Caregiving in Connecticut
This story is part of our Caregiving in Connecticut series. Explore the stories and conversations.
