[Home care for the elderly: profile of the formal caregiver -- Part I].

The frail elderly, maintained in its home, request specific cares, which are accomplished many times by people contracted, denominated formal caregivers, With the increase of offer of these people's work and the shortage on its profile, we developed a study with 41 advertisers that offered its services in two newspapers of larger circulation in the city of Campinas, São Paulo, with the following objectives: 1. to characterize these caregivers and 2. to verify the activities proposals for care to the elderly. In the present work the referring data are presented the caregivers' characteristics as: to the sex, the age, the formation and previous experience, schedule readiness and demanded remuneration.