How long is long term care?

Caregiving: a common or uncommon experience?

The analysis reported here aims to establish the household prevalence of caregiving in Australia, drawing on a large scale, longitudinal survey conducted as part of the Victorian Carers Project. Comparisons are made with a national survey conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and with Canadian and U.K. findings. Three aspects of caregiving are investigated: reported household prevalence, taking account of differences in definitions used in various surveys; the extent of intergenerational exchanges involved in caregiving; and the time dimensions of caregiving, in terms of duration and patterns of cessation of caregiving over time. A high degree of consistency is found in prevalences of caregiving and implications for the development of policies and programs to support caregivers are raised concerning levels of caregiving, approaches to identifying carers, targeting of services and promotion of caregiving, and the spread of the experience of caregiving across the lifecycle and between generations.

Analysing access to nursing home care

The aim of this study is to investigate access to nursing home care in selected regions of Australia, Canada and the United States, and to examine the common ways in which nursing homes are used. Firstly, a review of methodological considerations in measuring access to nursing home care is made. Secondly, patient turnover patterns are interpreted with a view to showing differences in nursing home use among the countries studied; aggregate turnover rates, length of stay and outcomes are compared. Thirdly, groups of patients who differ in demographic and morbidity characteristics and in their use of nursing homes are discussed. Finally a number of distributive implications of these results are raised and a framework is outlined for considering redistributive consequences of changes in the use of nursing homes. It is concluded that the rate of flow of patients through nursing homes is as important a determinant of access to nursing home care as the level of bed provision and that adoption of this dynamic view of access indicates considerable scope for redistributing use of resources within the nursing home systems of all three countries.