Introduction:

Currently, issues as elderly, disability, and vulnerable population are relevant and demand social support programs.

Objective:

To describe the effect of a social support program for family caregivers of afro Colombian disabled elderly in Guapi, Cauca.

Methodology:

Quantitative, quasi-experimental design, without control group, with pretest and post-test. Intentional sample of 50 afro Colombian family caregivers. The social support program, culturally congruent, was applied by the nurse researcher and two community leaders. The information was collected with MOS Questionnaire-Social support, and processed and analyzed with descriptive methods and Wilcoxon signed rank test. Ethical aspects were considered.

Results:

For the most part, women fulfill the role of family caregivers (95%), especially daughters (49%), who dedicate more than 8 hours to family (35%) caring for the relative. The elderly present severe dependency (60%), moderate dependency (36%) or mild dependency (4%). Nuclear families with elderly (66%) and extended modified families (34%) predominate. The program revealed statistically significant effects of global social support and by dimensions to family caregivers (value -p < 0,001).

Conclusions:

The social support program tackled from the cultural perspective is an opportunity to co-create therapeutic diversity with mediation between popular and professional knowledge, and showed statistically significant effects over global social support (Value-p < 0,001) and by dimensions in family caregivers (Value-p < 0,001).

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