Negotiating community long-term care: The experience of spousal caregivers caring for their partners with dementia.
Published: 2006
Language: eng
Number of pages: 194
ISBN-13: 9780494220467
Description: The study employed a survey design with a convenience sample of 85 spousal caregivers who lived with their partners and who were using some form of community long-term care services. The face-to-face administration of the study questionnaires allowed caregivers to offer further remarks regarding their experiences with both the service system and caregiving in general. These comments were valuable in extending interpretations of the quantitative data.The objectives of this study are twofold: (a) to examine the relationship between the long-term community care system and spousal caregivers' mental health and (b) to explore the associations between different types of community long-term care services and caregivers' mental health. Informed by an ecological systems framework, this dissertation aims to depict the relationship between, a complex, market-oriented, resource-limited, long-term community care system and caregiving spouses' mental health.The results of this study highlight that adult day programs offer spousal caregivers a unique form of respite. Of three different types of respite services including; day program services, in-home community support workers' services, and institutional respite services, only the frequency of day program use significantly correlated with caregiver burden. Multiple regression analysis showed that caregivers whose spouse used more days of a day program experienced less burden. Comments made by caregivers in this study reinforced the important respite afforded by adult day programs.The results of this study further demonstrate that new or substitute in-home community support workers, who are not informed about the needs of caregivers and persons with dementia, negatively contribute to spousal caregivers' perceptions of services. Specifically, a multiple regression analysis demonstrated that, the less informed in-home community support workers were the more spousal caregivers experienced service discontinuity.Finally, the findings from this research suggest that spousal caregivers do not currently have access to ongoing one-on-one professional support for case coordination, and for information and guidance. Consequently, these caregivers are isolated in their provision of some of the most complex and emotionally challenging types of care. This study offers practice and policy implications that look to close the gap between spousal caregivers' needs and the long-term community care system.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-01, Section: A, page: 0350.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto, 2006.

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