A map of long-term care for people with dementia at the level of local communities : the needs of people with dementia and the vision of care

Mali, Jana (author)

Long-term care for people with dementia has been studied using the Rapid Assessment of Needs and Services method, which has been used to map long-term care needs in order to stimulate the development of care that effectively meets the needs of people with dementia. In this paper, we present the results of three focus groups with key stakeholders in long-term care for people with dementia in three selected communities, involving 29 people from a variety of organisations: social work centres, homes for the older people, health centres, general and psychiatric hospitals, municipalities and non-governmental organizations. Qualitative analysis of the empirical material showed that the following problems are prevalent in the communities: (i) acute and unmet needs of informal caregivers, (ii) a multi-tiered system of long-term care that puts people in an unequal position, (iii) a lack of community-based long-term care, and inadequate responses to the needs of people with dementia. Even in communities where there are various forms of support, both institutional and community-based, available across all service sectors, long-term care for people with dementia is based on informal care. We propose the development of a national strategy for family caregivers, with special attention to informal caregivers of people with dementia. The support offered by existing facilities is inadequate, poorly accessible, or nonexistent. Homes for older people are overcrowded, and people with dementia wait months or years to be admitted to a home. Home-based assistance is not evenly distributed across communities, and its scale (20 hours per week) in particular is insufficient to meet the needs of people with dementia. There is a lack of alternative forms of care that enable people with dementia to remain in their own home environment for as long as possible, for example in the form of personal assistance. We suggest that the development of long-term care for people with dementia should be based on the proposed research methodology.

• Language: English
• Keywords: dementia, social work, community care, long-term care, elderly, rapid assessment of needs and services
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FSD - Faculty of Social Work
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: Str. 109-124
• Numbering: [Vol.] 20, [no.] 2
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-167741
• UDC: 364-783.4
• ISSN on article: 1854-0031
• DOI: 10.51936/gmuf2033
• COBISS.SI-ID: 200555267

Note

Licenca Creative Commons je navedena na pristajalni strani članka: "This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)". (Datum opombe 10. 3. 2025)

• Publication date in RUL: 10.03.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Metodološki zvezki
• Publisher: Fakulteta za družbene vede
• ISSN: 1854-0031
• COBISS.SI-ID: 215796992

Licences

• License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Description: The most restrictive Creative Commons license. This only allows people to download and share the work for no commercial gain and for no other purposes.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: demenca, socialno delo, dolgotrajna oskrba, lokalna skupnost, potrebe

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0058-2018
• Name: Socialno delo kot nosilec procesov družbenega vključevanja in socialne pravičnosti v Sloveniji - teoretske podlage, metodološke in metodične usmeritve in zgodovinski razvoj

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: J5-2567-2020
• Name: Dolgotrajna oskrba ljudi z demenco v teoriji in praksi socialnega dela