Present Social Support Situation And Its Influencing Factors Investigation Of Home Caregivers For The Oldest Old

Objective This paper aims to understand present overview, social and community support status of the home caregivers for the oldest old. It aims to analyze the factors that influence the social and community support of caregivers, and to explore countermeasures against poor social support on home caregivers. They are hoped to provide reference for decision-making departments of government.Methods At first, using cluster sampling method, I selected2districts randomly out of5old districts of Hangzhou city, and chose1street from each selected district, and chose3communities from each selected street. Thus, six communities were extracted in total. Secondly, I did household survey to those families with full-time caregivers.202oldest old and their caregivers accepted the household survey. The designed questionnaire, ADL scale and the social support scale were used during the survey. Meanwhile, using purpose sampling method, I did face-to-face interviews on12persons who worked for the elders in the communities, including community workers and assistants for the elder and community nurses.Results①Present overview of the caregivers:The investigated caregivers are mainly children and spouses of the oldest old. The elder women are in the majority. Those caregivers have low educational level and are seriously lack of care knowledge. Most of them have been caregivers for several years even decades of years and many are24-hour caregivers. The care receivers have high ratio of chronic disease. Their self-care ability declines significantly. The caregivers are bearing heavy care burden and their daily life is influenced, especially their social activities, sleep, health and entertainment.②Social support status of the caregivers:The caregivers social support is low, whose total score of social support is lower than the norms (34.56+ ±3.72). The subjective, objective support and the social support exploitation degree scoring are also below normal levels. The difference of the social support exploitation degree between males and females is statistically significant(P<0.05).Women caregivers have poorer ability in the social support exploitation than men. The binary classification Logist regression showed that educational background, self assessment on their care work and their response to the abnormal emotional situation of care receivers may be protective factors (OR<1,β<0), and gender, age may be risk factors (OR>1,β>0). More social support is gained by the caregivers who are better educated and satisfied with their care work, and have good ability to response to the abnormal emotional situation of care receivers. Females and elders gain less social support than others.③Community support status for the elders:The institutes providing service for the elders are in small scale, in which service providing for the elders becomes a mere formality. This status leads to the failure of the service for the oldest old and the disability elders to meet the demands. There is a shortage of community workers for the elders. The teams providing services for the elder are unstable. There is no training program for the assistants for the elder that leads to limited service level. At the same time, communities have not play a good role in giving guidance and support for home caregivers.Conclusion We must pay more serious attention to providing support and aids to the caregivers who take care of the oldest old. We need further study on countermeasures of support for caregivers. It is time for community formal care departments to develop community caregivers support service, to build caregivers helping center, to give respite care to caregivers. At the same time, it is necessary to standardize the contacts between organizations providing services to the elder, to strengthen the elderly care personnel training and to improve the community supporting effect on home care for the elder.