Different views on collaboration between older persons, informal caregiversand care professionals.

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Informal care features high on the policy agenda of many countries to deal with workforce shortages. As a consequence, care provision increasingly takes place in the care triad of care recipients, informal caregiversand care professionals. How collaboration between care partners takes shapedepends on how the different partners perceive this collaboration. This paper aims to investigate the relative importance of the different aspects of collaboration from the perspectives of care recipients, informal caregiversand care professionals in the context of the care for older persons in The Netherlands. Using Q-methodology, 32 participants ranked 28 statements that reflect different aspects of collaboration in the care triad and explained their ranking during a follow-up interview. Participants comprised9 older persons, 10 informal caregiversand 13 care professionals. Data were analysed using by-person factor analysis to identify common patterns in the rankings of the statements. Emerging patterns were interpreted and described as views on collaboration using aggregated rankings and qualitative data from the interviews. Five distinct views on collaboration were found: (1) Emphasizing warm collaboration, (2) trusting care professional's expertise, (3) open and compassionate care professionals, (4) responsive decision-making by autonomous care professionalsand (5) prioritizing care recipient's and informal caregiver's interests. Care recipientsand/or informal caregivers were associated with views 1, 3 and, 5, whereas care professionals were associated with all five views. Our study highlights the importance of recognizing the potential diversity of views between and within different partner groups in care triads. Governmental and organizational policy makers, as well as healthcare professionals who aim to increase or support the involvement of informal caregivers, should take this heterogeneity into consideration. An advisory board of older persons (care recipients and informal caregivers) was involved in the recruitment of the participants, the formulation of the statementsand the reflection on the findings of the study and potential implications.