Abstract
BackgroundInformal caregivers are essential figures for maintaining frail elderly at home. Providing informal care can affect the informal caregivers’ physical and psychological health and labour market participation capabilities. They need support to prevent caregiver burden. A variety of existing support measures can help the caregiver care for the elderly at home, but with some limitations. The objective of this review was to explore the experiences of informal caregivers caring for elderly in the community with the use of supportive policy measures in Belgium and compare these to the experiences in other European countries.MethodsAn empirical qualitative case study research was conducted in five European countries (Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Germany). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with informal caregivers and their dependent elderly. Interview data from the different cases were analysed. In particular data from Belgium was compared to data from the cases abroad.ResultsFormal services (e.g. home care) were reported to have the largest impact on allowing the caregiver to care for the dependent elderly at home. One of the key issues in Belgium is the lack of timely access to reliable information about formal and informal services in order to proactively support the informal caregiver. Compared to the other countries, informal caregivers in Belgium expressed more difficulties in accessing support measures and navigating through the health system. In the other countries information seemed to be given more timely when home care was provided via care packages.ConclusionTo support the informal caregiver, who is the key person to support the frail elderly, fragmentation of information regarding supportive policy measures is an important issue of concern.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-016-1487-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Informal caregivers are essential figures for maintaining frail elderly at home
According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), long-term care is “a range of services required by persons with a reduced degree of functional capacity, physical or cognitive, and who are dependent for an extended period of time on help with basic activities of daily living (ADL)”
The interview data was divided into four parts (1) description of the family, professional and living situation of the informal caregiver and the dependent elderly, (2) the informal caregiver role, (3) formal services for the dependent elderly, and (4) support measures for the informal caregivers
Summary
Providing informal care can affect the informal caregivers’ physical and psychological health and labour market participation capabilities. They need support to prevent caregiver burden. A variety of existing support measures can help the caregiver care for the elderly at home, but with some limitations. It is expected that the ageing population will increase the need and consumption of long-term care in Europe over time [1, 2]. Formal care refers to provisions to dependent people by health and social care professionals within regulated employment relationships. Informal care refers to the care or support given on a voluntary basis to a dependent elderly by a family member, friend or acquaintance [3]
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