A Study on the Utilization of Supportive Services for the Family Caregivers of Long-term Care Patients

• Main Authors: Fang-Yi Chen, 陳芳宜
• Other Authors: Mio-Hui Tseng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/59471624364938673999

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 保險學系保險經營碩士班 === 96 === Due to ageing population, the increase in average life expectancy at birth and chronic disease morbidity, Taiwanese future will face a substantial increase in long-term care needs. The population census of year 2000 shows that of all the long-term care population, over 90 percent need care from family members, which means that for most patients, "family care" approach is their primary choice. The result highlights that families and caregivers play a very important role during the long-term care. However, due to transition of current demographic structure, when families face long-term care issue, the long-term care bore entirely by family resources have caused huge pressure to them. In view of this, the Taiwanese government, when designing the long-term care system, has begun to take family caregivers burden and pressure into consideration. The development of a number of support services through the implementation of the system can reduce the burden of care, thus extending the patients home-care time, which achieve the purpose of so called "aging in place". The current academic literature found that seldom studies focus their subject on general households. Therefore, this paper will target the general case of family households, and carry out a study on the use of family care support services. The paper also intend to find out the circumstances of the factors affecting the use of services at their own expense, and projected use Services will of the factors affecting the future to provide the planning system or modify the recommendations. The results showed that the Government does provide various support services, however, the utility level of majority of services are not high. More than half of all patients search for the related information through internet channel or by the help of caregivers, friends and family. The main reason for not using the public service could attribute to: "I do not know where I can apply". Another finding is that factors affect the use of the long-term care services are not the same. The Predisposing factors to the patients’ age, marital status, and the Enabling factors to the patients’ employment situation, ways of care, impact most use of services. From the results of research, the need factor does not affect the use of services. The use of services at their own expenses will be affected by the Predisposing factors to patients with age, education level of caregivers, the views of caring responsibility, and the Enabling factors to the average monthly household income and monthly cost of care; Need factors did not affect the use of the services at their own expense. .