The effect of respite care services to caregivers of children with severely disabilities at home. Especially focus on the effect of short term admission and day care service.

2011 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 22792244
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Lifelong developmental nursing
• Research Institution: Toyohashi Sozo University
• Principal Investigator: NAKAJIMA Reiko 豊橋創造大学, 保健医療学部, 助手 (90550278)
• Project Period (FY): 2010 – 2011
• Keywords: 小児在宅看護 / レスパイトケア

Research Abstract

In order to clarify the effect of respite care services, questionnaire survey was carried out to 361 caregivers of children with severely disabilities at home. The survey revealed that the respite care services were useful for caregivers to take a rest and refresh themselves. But there was no significant difference in scale scores of sense of fatigue between service users and non-users. Therefore, this service is useful for transient refreshing them, but it is not useful for reducing their feeling of fatigue, except a little relief of overwork by available use according to caregivers' needs at service facilities.
The major reasons for insufficient rescue of caregivers' overwork and relief of sense of fatigue may be derived from shortage of service facility and lack of systems to meet caregiver's needs. So, it is immediately desirable to increase the number of service facilities and to make systems for available service to meet the needs of caregivers using present resources.