Impact of the Outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Formal and Informal Care of Community-Dwelling Older Adults: Cross-National Clustering of Empirical Evidence from 23 Countries

Aviad Tur-Sinai,Giovanni Lamura,Paolo Fabbietti,Netta Bentur

doi:10.3390/su13137277

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been dramatically affecting the life of older adults with care needs and their family caregivers. This study illustrates how the initial outbreak of the pandemic changed the supply of formal and informal care to older adults in European countries and Israel and assesses the resilience of these countries in providing support to their older populations by means of a mix of both types of care. We subjected data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe COVID-19 period (SHARE-COVID-19) across 23 European countries (including Israel) to descriptive and cluster analyses. In the first wave of the outbreak, a significant proportion of older adults in European countries received informal help, with an increase in the frequency of informal help received from children, neighbors, friends, or colleagues and a decrease in that received from other relatives. In most countries, difficulties in receiving home care services from professional providers were reported. Seven clusters were identified, reflecting different combinations of changes in the formal/informal care provision. In most countries, informal care is more resilient than home care services that formal providers deliver. Since they are an essential source for sustainable care, their challenges related to care should be addressed. The impact of the pandemic does not follow the traditional characterization of welfare regimes. A clustering effort may yield more understanding of the priorities that future care policies should exhibit at the national level and may identify potential systems for policymakers to enhance sustainability of care for community-dwelling older adults.

Highlights

The COVID-19 outbreak caught the world unprepared
The impact of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of formal and informal care varied among countries (Figure 1)
In some European countries the amount of formal and informal help grew during that time while in others a completely opposite picture was found—less help received formally and informally

Summary

Introduction

The COVID-19 outbreak caught the world unprepared. To tackle and contain the pandemic, most public-health efforts were initially addressed to the immediate impacts of the crisis, such as those relating to care for those infected, operating hospitals, and coping with the severely ill [1]. To mitigate the impact of these restrictions, many countries added a series of economic and social interventions such as in-cash economic support [3], enlarged social-welfare provisions [4], and subventions for community and volunteer organizations [5], to name only a few. Sustainability 2021, 13, 7277 of economic and social interventions such as in-cash economic support [3], enlarged social-welfare provisions [4], and subventions for community and volunteer organizations [5], to name only a few. Hospitalizations, and other measures of the impact of the pandemic on the population at large specific older adults inin residential homes [6,7,8].

Methods

Results

Conclusion