Caregivers and Acute Care Hospitals

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1. Family caregivers of ill children, the disabled, and the elderly face increasing demands as they learn the limitations in the community-based services. These services include home health care, transportation to medical services, respite or other needed services. What have you found as restrictions/gaps in such services in your community?

In many communities transportation to medical services is often restricted, especially for the elderly. Often there are buses for the disabled, albeit a long wait at times (need to pre-book a few days in advance). However, the elderly people often do not have easy access to transportation, especially if they are on a meager income (e.g., taxi cabs are expensive). As far as home health care, for those who qualify, it provides the bare necessities (2 hours every two weeks for home management, which includes house work and laundry), with thorough house cleaning chores that the disabled or elderly cannot do for themselves, left undone. Respites are usually sufficient as they are given higher priority than say cleaning a house for a person who was disabled. Saying, that though, they have reported issues in other areas (discussed later on).

Regarding transportation, in a Canadian study (2002), the cost of both using and providing transportation service in rural areas was found to be problematic for the rural elderly and physically disabled, and for the service providers of these populations. Several additional barriers to providing transportation services for rural elderly and disabled residents were also reported in this study (representative of other rural communities as well) such as:

* The use of transportation options is shaped by the attitudes, preferences, and trends of the rural elderly population. The literature suggests that informal services through friends and family are most ...