Projektdetails

Objectives

The demographic change in all European countries means that the increasing numbers living into an extended old-age is combined with more frequent and longer phases of being in need of care. Thus the majority of all families in Europe will have to cope with providing long-term care to individual family members, often over a period of several years. Despite all the reported positive aspects of caregiving the perceived burden of family carers is extraordinarily high, has a lasting negative effect on health and reduces quality of life significantly. In particular carers of cognitively disabled elderly are strongly affected.

A European policy aim is to enable elderly people to remain at home as long as possible, which imply the possibility of end-of life care at home, and lead to savings for long-term care financing agencies. But this is only feasible with the support of family carers as there is no realistic possibility of satisfactorily meeting care needs with other informal carers and professional carers only.

Certainly, based on different types of welfare-states, there are some schemes and support services for family carers. However, the differences both within and between countries, on a quantitative and qualitative level, are huge. At the European level the numbers and variety of schemes and services, whether succesful or inefficient, remain unknown.

Main project goal of EUROFAMCARE

The evaluation of the situation of family carers of elderly people in relation to the (non-)existence, (non)familiarity, (non)availability, (non)use and (non-)acceptability of supporting services, in order to formulate:

• At a macro-level, suggestions for the implementation of more comprehensive,carer-friendly erderly care policies in Europe
• at a meso-level, suggestions for developing new partnership between service providers, local authorities and caring families, and the implementation of innovtive user-oriented services and
• at a micro-level, more systematic and adequately disseminated knowledge about care-giving, thus contributing to significantly reducing the risk of impairment in the cared-for elderly and the same time improving caregivers' quality of life.

Main goal of the NABARE

The NABARE for Germany is one of further European National Background Reports. On the basis of a secondary analysis it reflects the macro-level of supporting family care and will analyse the state of family care and its support. The report reviews existing information on available support services (characteristics and coverage) and existing knowledge on the main needs of caregivers and the care of the elderly. It will reflect the overall national structure of any services on offer that claim to support family carers, as well as variations in availability and use relating to different ethnic groups, regions, religions, "social classes" etc.
The NABARE for Germany will be part of a pan-European background report (PEUBARE) which will contain and compare current information concerning the European situation of family carers' (non)-support, (non)relief and (non)expertise in the years 2003/2004 with respect to the variety of different social-, health- and welfare systems.