Adult foster care of older people

The focus of this article is to introduce the community-based adult foster care of older people in Finland. Although adult foster care is a public care service, it is organised in a private home, either in the foster carer’s home or in the older person’s home. The foster carer and the county make a commission agreement. Adult foster care can be full-time long-term care or short-term full-time or part-time care.

Caring in space: the boundaries between public and private spaces in Finnish adult foster care homes

The purpose of this article is to explore a hybrid community-based form of care for older people called adult foster care. In the article, the nature of the foster care home as a place of care is explored from the foster carers’ point-of-view. It is based on an interview study of 12 foster carers. In this article, the theoretical frameworks from human geography and work–family research are combined in order to analyse the boundaries between private family-life and public work-life in the particular space of the foster care home. The research questions are: What kinds of public and private spaces exist in adult foster care homes? What kinds of boundaries separate (a) the public and private spaces and (b) the foster care home and the outside world? The findings suggest that foster care homes are very complex socio-spatial places of care, in which the questions of power (who can do what and when in a certain space), the re-organisation of home, and the division of private and public spaces all contest the idea of home as a mere ‘safe haven’ from the pressures of work life. Different boundaries and boundary management strategies enabled the foster carers to regard their place of living and working as their home, even though it had altered to a place of care of ‘strangers’.

The Resident VIEW in Nursing Homes

This article presents the Resident VIEW (Voicing Importance, Experience, and Well-Being), a measure designed to learn directly from long-term care residents the extent to which they experience support that matters most to them. The Resident VIEW contains 63 items across eight domains developed through cognitive interviews with residents in different types of residential settings (e.g., nursing homes, assisted living, and adult foster care). Residents rate items on both importance and their experience. In total, 258 nursing home residents living in 32 Oregon nursing homes were selected through a two-stage random sampling design and participated in the study. Results demonstrate that what matters most to residents varies, emphasizing the value of asking residents directly about their preferences. The relationship between importance and experience differed by item. Residents who experienced support rated very important within some domains, reported better quality of life and reported lower levels of depressive symptoms than those who did not experience these things. The interaction between importance and experience, however, did not reach statistical significance, suggesting that positive experiences may provide benefit even in some areas that are not perceived as important by residents. Results underscore the value of incorporating the resident perspective into measure development in long-term care.

Deficyty emocjonalne młodych dorosłych wychowanków rodzin zastępczych

The study was aimed to determine the role of attachment bond in emotional functioning in alexithy-mia and emotional processing in foster care alumni. The participants with experience of personal rejection – adult foster care alumni during the transition from foster care to adulthood (N = 29) and persons without such experience (N = 32) took part in the study. The Experiences in Close Relation-ships Scale, Toronto Alexithymia Scale and Emotional Processing Scale were used. Results present that insecure pattern of attachment occurs with alexithymia in ineffective emotional processing. We confront the results with the construct of emotion representations as the key to comprehend observed deficits in emotional functioning.

Jotain uutta, jotain vanhaa, jotain lainattua - ikääntyneiden perhehoito Suomessa

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan ikääntyneiden perhehoitoa, jolla tarkoitetaan ikääntyneen henkilön lyhyt-, osa-aikais- tai pitkäaikaishoitoa ja asumista perhehoitajan kodissa. Artikkelin tarkoituksena on tunnistaa tekijöitä, jotka ovat perhehoidon taustalla ja joiden varassa perhehoitoa kehitetään ikääntyneiden hoivan yhdeksi vaihtoehdoksi. Lisäksi artikkelissa tarkastellaan perhehoitoa hoivapoliittisena ratkaisuna julkisen ja yksityisen rajalla semiformaaliuden ja (de)domestikaation käsitteiden kautta. Aineistona käytetään eduskunnan täysistuntojen pöytäkirjoja sekä perhehoito- ja perhehoitajalakeja ja näiden lakien hallituksen esityksiä, joita analysoidaan Carol Bacchin WPR-metodin avulla. Tulosten mukaan ikääntyneiden perhehoidon kehittäminen perustuu yhtäältä oletuksiin siitä, että ikääntyneet haluavat asua omassa kodissaan mahdollisimman pitkään, ja toisaalta siihen, että kodinomainen palveluratkaisu on parempi niin ikääntyneelle itselleen ja julkiselle taloudelle kuin laitoshoito. Oletukset liittyvät ennen kaikkea kodin ja perheen ensisijaisuuteen hyvän hoivan järjestämisessä. Perhehoidon kehittämisessä ei problematisoida ikääntyneen omia valinnanmahdollisuuksia perhehoitoon pääsemisessä. Something new, something old, something borrowed – adult foster care for older people in Finland In this article, a new care and housing service called adult foster care for older people is examined by using Carol Bacchi’s WPR method. The purpose of this article is to identify and analyse the reasons behind the current enthusiasm to develop this service. In addition, adult foster care is analysed as a semiformal and domesticated political solution between public and private spheres. The data consists of proceedings of plenaries of the Finnish Parliament, the Act on Adult Foster Care, the Act on Adult Foster Carer, and proposals of the government. The results show that the development of adult foster care is based on the following assumptions: older people want to live in their own homes for as long as possible, and a home-like service solution is better both for older people themselves and for public economy than traditional long-term service. The main assumption is that home and family are essential in providing good care for older people. However, older peoples’ own freedom of choice is not problematised at all.