More free time for me? Effects of a group intervention for informal caregivers based on routine data from the SVLFG long-term care insurance

Abstract

The intervention is amultiday health program of the Social Insurance for Agriculture, Forestry and Horticulture (SVLFG) for informal caregivers. Does the intervention increase the use of outside help to gain free time for self-care? Using aquasi-experimental within-design, we analyze annual benefit data from the SVLFG long-term care insurance for the cluster sample Bavaria from 2017 to 2020 with intervention in 2018/2019. Using fixed effects panel regressions, we determine the effect heterogeneity for care relationship, duration of care and degree of care, adjusting for period effects (intervention and comparison group: 88and 6045 persons with 207 and 16,091 observations, respectively). After the intervention, the use of services for outside help tends to be higher than before. The effect is significantly more pronounced with increasing care level, care within the partnership and shorter care duration. With care within the partnership, start of care before 1 year and care level 4/5, more outside help is used afterwards for 1160 € (p < 0.001) than before. Design and statistical method would allow acausal conclusion; however, in view of the limitations, in particular the small number of cases in the intervention group and the only limited characteristics available to control for time-dynamic heterogeneity, caution is advisable.