Linnosmaa, Ismo;
Nguyen, Lien;
Jokimaki, Hanna;
Saloniki, Eirini-Christina;
Malley, Juliette;
Trukeschitz, Birgit;
Hajji, Assma;
(2024)
Quality of life outcomes for informal carers of long-term care service users in Austria, England and Finland.
Quality of Life Research
10.1007/s11136-024-03711-2.
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Abstract
Purpose: The provision and funding of long-term care (LTC) for older people varies between European countries. Despite differences, there is limited information about the comparative performance of LTC systems in Europe. In this study, we compared quality of life (QoL) of informal carers of home care service users in Austria, England and Finland. Methods: Informal carers were surveyed in Austria, England and Finland. The study data (n = 835) contained information on social care-related quality of life (SCRQoL) associated with the ASCOT-Carer measure, and characteristics of carers and care recipients from each country. We applied risk-adjustment methods using a fractional regression model to produce risk-adjusted SCRQoL scores for the comparative analysis. In a sensitivity analysis, we applied multiple imputation to missing data to validate our findings. Results: We found that the mean values of the risk-adjusted SCRQoL of informal carers in England were 1.4–2.9% and 0.3–0.5% higher than in Finland and Austria, and the mean values of the risk-adjusted SCRQoL of carers in Austria were 0.8–2.7% higher than in Finland. Differences in the mean values of the country-specific risk-adjusted SCRQoL scores were small and statistically non-significant. English informal carers were less healthy and co-resided with care resipients more often than carers in Austria or Finland. Conclusion: Small differences between the risk-adjusted SCRQoL scores between Austria, England and Finland are consistent with the observation that the countries provide different types of support for informal carers. Our results help local and national decision-makers in these countries to benchmark their informal care support systems.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Quality of life outcomes for informal carers of long-term care service users in Austria, England and Finland |
| Location: | Netherlands |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11136-024-03711-2 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11136-024-03711-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Health Care Sciences & Services, Health Policy & Services, Public, Environmental & Occupational Health, Informal care, Quality of life, Risk-adjustment, Comparative analysis, Long-term care, SOCIAL CARE, HEALTH-CARE, COSTS, REGRESSION, LEVEL |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Applied Health Research |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10195651 |
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