Abstract
To meet the rising demand for home care, many families in Italy hire live-in migrant care workers (MCWs). However, the reliance on MCWs to provide long-term care (LTC) and a lack of alternative formal care services raises concerns around equality in access to care. This study aimed to determine the socio-economic predictors of hiring live-in MCWs among older adults with LTC needs in Italy, the objective care burden placed on MCWs, and the financial barriers that people in need of care and informal caregivers face when hiring MCWs, analysing data from a cross-sectional questionnaire with 366 older adults with LTC needs and their primary family caregivers living in the Marche region. Binary logistic regression was used to calculate the predictors of hiring a live-in MCW. Having a primary caregiver that had a high school education or above significantly increased the odds of hiring a live-in MCW (Odds Ratio (OR) = 3.880), as did receiving a social pension (OR = 2.258). Over half (57.5 percent) of the people in need of care had difficulties in affording the costs of hiring an MCW in the past year. To increase the sustainability of the Italian MCW market and reduce socio-economic barriers to accessing care, the Italian Government should increase funding for LTC benefits and add means testing and restrictions on the use of cash-for-care allowances.
Highlights
This was conducted in an area that, in terms of availability and use of long-term care (LTC) services like home care and residential care, lays in the middle of an ideal ranking of Italian regions, and could be useful to understand the specificity of the Italian case
This study built upon and addressed research gaps from past studies to update and enhance our understanding of the socio-economic factors that influenced the recruitment of live-in migrant care workers (MCWs) in Italy, the objective care burden placed on
The combination of findings presented in this article pointed to several areas of concern regarding the sustainability of the Italian MCW
Summary
The demand for home care in Italy is rising, in part due to its ageing demographic. The number of informal caregivers is estimated to decrease in coming years due to increases in women’s labour force participation, rising old-age dependency ratios, and drops in intergenerational co-residency [2,3,4]. Family members, often women, were responsible for filling the demand for long-term care (LTC) and home care in Italy [5,6,7,8]. It was estimated that 16.4 percent of the Italian population aged 15 years or older provide informal care, with 85.4 percent of these informal caregivers providing care for a family member [9,10]. Another study by Tur-Sinai et al [11] estimated that between 13.66 and 20.02 percent of adults 50 years or older are informal caregivers
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