Quality of life outcomes for informal carers of long-term care service users in Austria, England and Finland

Linnosmaa, Ismo, Nguyen, Lien, Jokimäki, Hanna, Saloniki, Eirini Christina, Malley, Juliette ORCID: 0000-0001-5759-1647, Trukeschitz, Birgit and 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, 33 (9). 2477 - 2488. ISSN 0962-9343

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://link.springer.com/journal/11136
Additional Information:	© 2024 The Authors
Divisions:	Care Policy and Evaluation Centre
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology
Date Deposited:	14 Jun 2024 15:00
Last Modified:	13 Nov 2024 18:03
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/123821

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