Improving informal care by health professionals

Informal care is an important issue in many European countries because health care systems tend to become too expensive and because there is a strong need to rethink the benefits of the welfare state. We all know that the European health agenda is more and more influenced by the social agenda: health and well-being have to be considered as two sides of the same medal. Everybody, including people with a disability or a chronic disease, must be considered as citizens that are able to participate in society at their own level of knowledge and skills. In all segments of society we can observe a growing awareness that individuals are able or must be enabled to care for themselves and for their family members, neighbors and friends, thanks to the policy that people should only make use of facilities of health and social care when inevitable.

Several years ago the notions of citizenship and social inclusion are anchored in Dutch legislation. But the transition of a welfare state to a state of “responsible citizenship” is difficult because of several constraints which are met during the transition process. The implementation of the Wmo, the Dutch Law for Social Support, made it possible that all kinds of initiatives in the field of informal care are supported, either with professional aid or with financial budgets, but the initiatives are poorly coordinated and in many places of the Dutch organizations for informal care people are inventing the same wheel. Informal care givers continue to suffer from a sense of overload and are poorly informed about the facilities the local government has established especially for their support. Besides, the Dutch government suffers from the economic crisis. Unpopular measures have to be taken, such as savings on facilities for people with mental disabilities that will have negative effects on their informal care givers. The savings needed to be made also affect the formal care in nursing homes. Because of these developments the nursing homes become more and more dependent on informal care, but do not possess the tools to organize this in a satisfying way for clients, and for formal and informal care givers. Occupational Therapy students of the Amsterdam School of Health Professions recently studied the conditions for good policy on informal care in nursing homes and the role of health professionals in the way the policy is carried out The results of this study will be presented in the workshop.

The aim of this workshop is

• - to present a brief overview of the developments in informal care in the Netherlands
• - to present outcomes of interesting research in this field
• - to present the results of a study on the policy on informal care within nursing homes in the southeast part of Amsterdam
• - to exchange experiences with colleagues from different European countries
• - to discuss the relevance of the implementation of specific competences on informal care support by health professionals in
• the curricula of higher health education

Ruth Zinkstok Hogeschool van Amsterdam, The Netherlands

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