The Correlation of Home Care With Family Caregiver Burden and Depressive Mood: An Examination OF Moderating Functions

SummaryBackgroundAmid long-term care expansion in response to a fast-growing aging population and a concomitant increase in dependency rate, home care provides a means of delivering support, under the policy tenet of “aging in place”. As supply rises, the potential function it may perform necessitates increased scrutiny. Few studies have examined home care in terms of its role as a buffer, capable of mitigating the impact of care stressors on the caregiver, such as burden or depressive mood. This study aimed to fill the gap.MethodsData from 1,586 dependent elderly persons and their caregivers in the Pilot Program for Long-term Care Development in Taiwan in 2003 were analyzed. Hierarchical regression was used by entering respondent characteristics, the disabilities of the aged as stressors, home care as social support, and their interactions in sequential blocks.ResultsThe results indicated that home care can moderate the effects of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) on caregiver depressive mood. It was unable to moderate the effects of activities of daily living (ADL) and cognitive deficit on depressive mood. It also failed to moderate the effects of ADL, IADL and cognitive deficit on caregiver burden.ConclusionThe lack of a moderating effect of home care on most interaction terms may be the result of a low rate of service use. Despite low utilization, its ability to mitigate the negative impact of IADL on depressive mood reaffirms the necessity to conceptualize formal care as a type of social support and to examine its moderating function.