Supporting Frail Elderly People at Home Comparative Study of Two Domiciliary Care Services

Abstract

This study compares and contrasts the clients of two domiciliary care services delivered to elderly people in Darlington, Durham, UK, in terms of their living circumstances, dependency levels and the service inputs they receive. The two services are the Home Help Service managed by the local authority social services department and a Home Care Service managed by the Darlington Health Authority which offers an alternative to long‐stay hospital care for elderly people. The study examined only a sample of the most dependent home help clients and all of the home care clients. The instruments used to measure dependency were found to be limited in their ability to detect crucial differences in the two client groups and suggestions are made about how these might be improved. The main distinguishing characteristics of the Home Care Service clients were that they were, on average, younger and frailer than the home help clients and were far more likely to need help with toiletting, dressing, getting in/out of bed, walkng and making hot drinks. In contrast the main predictor of Home Help Service membership was living alone. It was concluded that although some home help clients were as incapacitated as home care ones, the latter scheme was far more consistently targetted on very frail, and often ill, people.

Citation

Stone, M., Barton, A., Coles, O., Dodds, M. and Smith, J. (1989), "Supporting Frail Elderly People at Home Comparative Study of Two Domiciliary Care Services", Journal of Management in Medicine, Vol. 4 No. 3, pp. 171-178. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb060546