Study On Social Support Services Of Senior's Family Caregivers In Shanghai

Nowadays, home care is the most important mode of aged care in China, most seniors prefer home care, therefore, family caregivers playing an increasingly important role. Due to a long-term, challenging, heavy care work, family caregivers suffered from heavy burden, which affected the caregiver's physical activities, spirit, emotion, economy, social life seriously, and ultimatly affected quality of life of themselves. Therefore, providing appropriate and sensitive support services to family caregivers who provide bulk of care to home-dwelling elderly is becoming a public issue. The experience of supporting caregivers of foreign countries showed that providing the caregivers with better social support services was an effective method to reducing caregivers'burden, and improving the quality of life of both seniors and caregivers. Therefore, providing effective support services to family caregivers had became an emergency, serious problem that should be solved immediately. However, aging in China presents the feature―old before getting rich‖, which is quite different from foreign countries, so we can't copy the caregiver support model of foreign countries. Therefore, this study first conducted to explore the eligible support services that can meet urgent need of caregivers, further to evaluate the necessity and feasibility of developed support services. Furthermore, these should provide references and policy recommendations to policy makers.There are two parts in this study.The first part was to develop the eligible social support services of seniors'family caregivers in Shanghai. Objectives: To develop the eligible social support services that can meet urgent need of family caregivers. Methods: Firstly to identify the caregiver support services in home and abroad by literature review. Secondly to explore the support need of seniors'family caregivers and the influence factors of support services'utility in Shanghai by semi-structure interview. Thirdly to construct the caregiver support services model according to the result based literature research and qualitative research. Lastly, amended and modified the preliminary developped support services by Delphi method (2 rounds and 15 experts). Results: The developed caregiver social support services including four dimensions ( instrument support, informational support, esteems support, social companionship support) and consisted of 29 items. Conclusions: Family caregivers had a urgent need of a series of support services; The experts had a positive attitude toward social support services and affirmed the necessity and feasibility.The second part is an investigation of the willingness of caregivers to pay caregiver support services. Objectives: Conducted the quantitative study to further evaluate the level of demand of caregiver support services from the perspective of caregivers, and exploring caregivers'willingness to pay support services and influences factors. Methods: Investigated 277 family caregivers of seniors used Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). Results:①Willing to pay or not: There were 190 (68.6%) caregivers had willingness to pay the general support service; Caregivers'willingness of concise support services were different, the top five items are: rehabilitation services had 182(65.7%) caregivers, patient referral service had 178 (64.3%) caregivers, community meal delivery had 177(61.7%) caregivers, modify security environment of home had 167(60.2%) caregivers, assist activities of daily living (bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, etc.) had 166(59.9%) caregivers; The bottom five items are: alternative payment of utilities had 148 (53.4%)caregivers, cultural and recreational activities had 149(53.8%) caregivers,role adaptation training had 149 (53.8%)caregivers, and pressure release training had 150 (54.2%)caregivers.②The amount of money that willing to pay:caregivers in this study had varying degrees of willingness to pay, in general, the amount that caregivers willing to pay is low, many caregivers selected the option of low money item in questionnaire in this study.③The influence factors of willingness to pay general support services are: age, family history of disease, the number of people who helped to take care of the responsibility,the time of care duration, monthly family income. Conclusions: The attitude of family caregiver toward support services is positive and the degree of willingness to pay for different support services are different; This suggested health service providers should vigorously carry out caregiver support services that can meet the urgent need of caregivers.