Abstract

Objectives: Aging in place has become an important policy goal. Home-based care services play an crucial role in supporting older people in coping with daily living activities. However, little is known about the quality of life of home care service users.

The aim of this paper is to compare the quality of life of service users living at home across three European countries, Austria, Finland and England.

Methods: Data was collected via personal standardised interviews with a total of more than 1,000 persons in the three countries. We will investigate the variation in long-term care service users’ quality of life outcomes (using ASCOT-S INT4) risk-adjustment models and regression methods.

Results: Preliminary results indicate that home care services contribute to improving care recipients’ quality of life in all three countries. In certain cases, the availability of home care services may even have had the effect of delaying care home admission. First results indicate a need to account for people’s needs and abilities when assessing the impact of home care service provision. Service users in the three countries differ in terms of their current needs in the areas (domains) of quality-of-life. Building on this, differences in the determinants of quality-of-life effects of home care services between the countries will be investigated.

Discussion: The results may help to better understand living conditions of frail older people using care services at home. They may also serve as an information for policy makers on how to adjust support in several policy fields in order to better meet the needs of care-dependent people. Furthermore, the discussion of the set-up of the study will contribute to gain better insight into the chances and challenges of cross-country data analyses as well as their implications for results and interpretations.