In this article we identify the specific situations that experience those old adult women who take charge of attending their relatives, also elderly, with serious health problems. To this purpose we interviewed family attendants that, due to this situation of caring, needed the support of specific social programs. The interviews have had the purpose of detecting the strategies they have devised to give answer to the needs of the dependent elder, the costs just economic as well as emotional and of health that these strategies imply for the attendants and an evaluation of their success or failure in relation with the life quality of the elder attended and the elder attendant. To this end, the type and support networks in the care, the family tensions, the financial aspects (the weight in the family budget) and the role of the community resources are analysed.
elderly women; care; family; social policy