General information
Code: J5-1785
Period: 1.7.2019 - 30.6.2022
Range on year: 0.72 FTE | 2020
Project leader at FDV: izr.prof.dr. Vesna Dolničar
Co-financiers: ARIS
Research activity: Social sciences
Abstract
Family carers of older people in Slovenia represent the backbone of the Slovenian long-term care system, yet the support available to them is scarce and scattered. Currently, the Slovenian long-term care system is fragmented, and there is no long-term care policy that addresses this type of care holistically. This places additional pressure on families to provide care. An under-investigated group of family carers are so-called distant family carers, who face several unique challenges which are not properly met. Developments in assistive telecare (AT) systems have created new spaces of care, enabling care at a distance and reshaping care and care relationships both within and across the traditional boundaries of the home. However, Slovenia is still lagging in the implementation of assistive telecare systems. A preliminary literature review shows that there is a lack of research that would empirically test the acceptance and outcomes of assistive telecare system use for family carers of older people within a spatial context of care. The proposed project addresses issues that are highly relevant to general social science and narrows existing knowledge gaps by pursuing the following objectives:
1. developing an innovative and currently non-existent socio-technical theoretical framework of the acceptability of assistive telecare systems and the outcomes of their use for distant and proximate family carers of older people, taking into consideration
the spatial context of family care;
2. empirically validating a theoretical assistive telecare system acceptance model for distant and proximate family carers of older people, on a representative sample of family carers of older people, considering attitudinal, behavioural and contextual factors, including the emotio-spatial and time-spatial context of care and the caregiving situation;
3. providing new knowledge on the outcomes of a tested stand-alone assistive telecare solution in real-life settings, focusing on (1) emotio-spatial and time-spatial aspects of care partnerships and (2) the characteristics of distant and proximate family carers of
older people (coping, burden, wellbeing) and their caregiving situations;
4. providing currently still non-existent and urgently needed representative data on Slovenian family carers of older people, including their characteristics, contexts, experiences and family caregiving situations;
5. developing an original segmentation model of family carers’ assistive telecare system acceptance in the spatial context and corresponding personas of family carers of older people.
The above objectives will be achieved by conducting a pioneering nation-wide representative survey and a mixed-method intervention study among family carers of older people. The proposed study will be conducted among (1) family carers of older people in the
general population, who will be included in the national representative survey, and (2) a subgroup of family carers of older people (distant carers and proximate family carers) who will test and evaluate the innovative stand-alone assistive telecare solution GoLiveClip,
which is available in the international market (but not yet in Slovenia).
The project team has extensive experience with large-scale international projects (FP6-7, H2020, Erasmus+, Interreg, EC tenders) in the fields of long-term care, informal care and telecare and telehealth interventions. The quality and feasibility of the project is assured by
the close involvement of globally leading scholars as Scientific Advisory Board members, who all have long-standing cooperation with the project team members.
The phases of the project and their realization
WP1: Project management (WP1.1: Project setup activities, WP1.2: Project risk management and quality assurance, WP1.3: Reporting); WP2: Development of the situation-specific framework of AT (WP2.1: A state-of-the-art review, WP2.2: Toward a conceptual acceptance model of AT use in different family care situations, WP2.3: Toward the model of outcomes of AT use in different family care situations, WP2.4: Development of the general research design); WP3: National representative survey (WP3.1: Finalising the quantitative study design and the data collection, WP3.2: Development of measurement instruments and analysis); WP4: Intervention study (WP4.1: Finalising intervention study design, WP4.2: Validation of acceptance factors of AT, WP4.3: Measuring the outcomes of AT use in different contexts of family care); WP5 Dissemination and exploitation of the results (WP5.1 Development of the project dissemination strategy, WP5.2 Execution of the dissemination and exploitation strategy).
Research Organisation
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=403&hits=1&id=17857&search_term=J5-1785
Researchers
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=402&hits=1&id=17857&search_term=J5-1785
Citations for bibliographic records
http://www.sicris.si/public/jqm/prj.aspx?lang=eng&opt=2&subopt=400&hits=1&id=17857&search_term=J5-1785
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