Supporting Older People to Live Safely at Home - Findings from Thirteen Case Studies on Integrated Care Across Europe.

INTRODUCTION: While many different factors can undermine older people's ability to live safely at home, safety as an explicit aspect of integrated care for older people living at home is an underexplored topic in research. In the context of a European project on integrated care, this study aims to improve our understanding of how safety is addressed in integrated care practices across Europe. METHODS: This multiple case study included thirteen integrated care sites from seven European countries. The Framework Method guided content analyses of the case study reports. Activities were clustered into activities aimed at identifying and managing risks, or activities addressing specific risks related to older people's functioning, behaviour, social environment, physical environment and health and social care receipt. RESULTS: Case studies included a broad range of activities addressing older people's safety. Although care providers felt they sufficiently addressed safety issues, older people were often concerned and insecure about their safety. Attention to the practical and social aspects of safety was often insufficient. CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION: Integrated care services across Europe address older people's safety in many ways. Further integration of health and social care solutions is necessary to enhance older people's perceptions of safety.

Improving Person-Centredness in Integrated Care for Older People: Experiences from Thirteen Integrated Care Sites in Europe.

INTRODUCTION: Although person-centredness is a key principle of integrated care, successfully embedding and improving person-centred care for older people remains a challenge. In the context of a cross-European project on integrated care for older people living at home, the objective of this paper is to provide insight at an overarching level, into activities aimed at improving person-centredness within the participating integrated care sites. The paper describes experiences with these activities from the service providers' and service users' perspectives. METHODS: A multiple embedded case study design was conducted that included thirteen integrated care sites for older people living at home. RESULTS: Service providers were positive about the activities that aimed to promote person-centred care and thought that most activities (e.g. comprehensive needs assessment) positively influenced person-centredness. Experiences of service users were mixed. For some activities (e.g. enablement services), discrepancies were identified between the views of service providers and those of service users. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Evaluating activities aimed at promoting person-centredness from both the service providers' and service users' perspectives showed that not all efforts were successful or had the intended consequences for older people. Involvement of older people in designing improvement activities could ensure that care and support reflect their needs and preferences, and build positive experiences of care and support.

Addressing safety risks in integrated care programs for older people living at home: a scoping review.

BACKGROUND: Many older people live at home, often with complex and chronic health and social care needs. Integrated care programs are increasingly being implemented as a way to better address these needs. To support older people living at home, it is also essential to maintain their safety. Integrated care programs have the potential to address a wide range of risks and problems that could undermine older people's ability to live independently at home. The aim of this scoping review is to provide insight into how integrated care programs address safety risks faced by older people living at home - an area that is rather underexplored. METHODS: Safety was conceptualised as preventing or reducing the risk of problems, associated with individual functioning and behaviour, social and physical environments, and health and social care management, which could undermine older people's ability to live independently at home. For this scoping review a systematic literature search was performed to identify papers describing integrated care programs where at least one intervention component addressed safety risks. Data were extracted on the programs' characteristics, safety risks addressed, and the activities and interventions used to address them. RESULTS: None of the 11 programs included in this review explicitly mentioned safety in their goals. Nevertheless, following the principles of our conceptual framework, the programs appeared to address risks in multiple domains. Most attention was paid to risks related to older people's functioning, behaviour, and the health and social care they receive. Risks related to people's physical and social environments received less attention. CONCLUSION: Even though prevention of safety risks is not an explicit goal of integrated care programs, the programs address a wide range of risks on multiple domains. The need to address social and environmental risks is becoming increasingly important given the growing number of people receiving care and support at home. Prioritising a multidimensional approach to safety in integrated care programs could enhance the ability of health and social care systems to support older people to live safely at home.

The SUSTAIN Project: A European Study on Improving Integrated Care for Older People Living at Home.

INTRODUCTION: Integrated care programmes are increasingly being put in place to provide care to older people who live at home. Knowledge of how to further develop integrated care and how to transfer successful initiatives to other contexts is still limited. Therefore, a cross-European research project, called Sustainable Tailored Integrated Care for Older People in Europe (SUSTAIN), has been initiated with a twofold objective: 1. to collaborate with local stakeholders to support and monitor improvements to established integrated care initiatives for older people with multiple health and social care needs. Improvements focus on person-centredness, prevention orientation, safety and efficiency; 2. to make these improvements applicable and adaptable to other health and social care systems, and regions in Europe. This paper presents the overall structure and approach of the SUSTAIN project. METHODS: SUSTAIN uses a multiple embedded case study design. In three phases, SUSTAIN partners: (i) conduct interviews and workshops with stakeholders from fourteen established integrated care initiatives to understand where they would prefer improvements to existing ways of working; (ii) collaborate with local stakeholders to support the design and implementation of improvement plans, evaluate implementation progress and outcomes per initiative, and carry out overarching analyses to compare the different initiatives, and; (iii) translate knowledge and experience to an online roadmap. DISCUSSION: SUSTAIN aims to generate evidence on how to improve integrated care, and apply and transfer the knowledge gained to other health and social care systems, and regions. Lessons learned will be brought together in practical tools to inform and support policy-makers and decision-makers, as well as other stakeholders involved in integrated care, to manage and improve care for older people living at home.

Cross-country variation in the sociodemographic factors associated with major depressive episode in Norway, the United Kingdom, Ghana, and Kenya.

Studies based on Western samples generally show that status characteristics like gender or marital status are associated with better mental health for individuals who occupy advantageous positions, such as men or the married. However, these patterns may not hold in developing regions that differ in important ways from the West. Guided by the Stress Process Model (SPM), this study uses logistic regression to examine the effect of gender, education, and other status characteristics on major depressive episode (MDE). Similarities and differences in these associations across two Western and two African countries are also assessed. Nationally representative data for adults ages 18 years and older are from the World Health Surveys (2002-2004) for Norway (N = 943), the United Kingdom (UK: N = 1195), Ghana (N = 3922), and Kenya (N = 4331). Results indicate a mixed pattern of associations between status characteristics and MDE across the four countries. Norwegian men face higher risk of MDE than Norwegian women-an anomalous finding. With some exceptions, education and employment status are not significantly related to MDE across the countries, providing little support for SPM. Marital status differences in risk of MDE are largest for Norway and smallest for Ghana. For the UK, men face lower risk of MDE than women across levels of mastery, and the gender gap in MDE is larger at higher levels of mastery. Overall, there is some heterogeneity in the associations between status characteristics and MDE even in somewhat similar environments like Ghana and Kenya. This study extends the reach of SPM to settings in sub-Saharan Africa, and contributes to the sparse empirical literature on the prevalence and sociodemographic correlates of MDE in the general populations of Ghana and Kenya.