Presentation of research findings at the CoE AgeCare Mid-Term Congress in Finland

Vesna Dolničar, PhD and Simona Hvalič Touzery, PhD, Researchers from the Centre for Social Informatics (CSI) at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana participated at the CoE AgeCare Mid-Term Congress ‘Longer lives, better care?’ Congress that was held on June 15-17 in Tempere, Finland. At the Congress they presented the results of the study among Slovenian informal carers. The overarching theme of the Congress was population ageing as a global phenomenon that is already changing the world, and the impact of population ageing on care needs and care policies in the future. In addition, the congress discussed the measures and policy tools needed to ensure high-quality care for older people. The congress was divided into three parts: 1) population ageing and care needs and inequalities, 2) agency and self-determination of older people, 3) diversification, rehybridization and digitalisation of care work. CDI researchers contributed to the latter part the paper on the impact of the care situation on the willingness to use telecare among informal carers of older people in Slovenia. The study found a high level of interest in telecare among informal carers of older people in Slovenia. Informal care situation was an important predictor of willingness to use personal alarm systems (PAS), as five of eight regressors made a statistically significant contribution to predicting PAS (fall experience, older persons age 85+, time distance between IC and OP, provision of emotional support, perseverance time - ability to maintain the care). The initial analysis showed that several other independent variables have a statistically significant influence on the willingness to use mobility-related devices (MRD) (compared to the willingness to use PAS) (e.g. dementia, ADL, OPs health status, number of persons cared for).

Paper presented:

• Hvalič Touzery, Simona, Dolničar, Vesna. The Impact of the Care Situation on the Willingness to Use Telecare Among Informal Carers of Older People in Slovenia

The conference programme with abstracts can be found here.

The presentation is a part of two projects financed by the Slovenian Research Agency from the state budget: Factors impacting intention to use smart technology enabled care services among family carers of older people in the context of long-distance care (J5-1785), and the research program Internet research (P5-0399).