Care counselling - The client's expectations

Aim: The amendment of legal care consultations in the context of the long-term care insurance law (2008) has broadened recent consulting practice within the action range of the nursing care insurance in Germany. The informational needs and consulting requests of the clients were not investigated so far. Our aim was to examine information needs and consulting requests of those in need of care and their informal carers. Methods: The consulting requests of visitors of 2 open citizen events were documented by the use of a semi-structured questionnaire. Content analysis following Mayring (2008) was used for data analysis. Results: 158 consulting discussions were documented, from which 177 consulting requests were formed. The consulting requests can be divided in 4 main categories: (1) inquiry about the care system [56/32%], (2) inquiry about individual access to care offers [43/24%], (3) inquiry about regional care suppliers [43/24%], (4) situation- and disease-specific inquiries [35/20%]. Conclusion: Inquiries about local suppliers of care and situation- and disease-specific inquiries outweigh the number of inquiries about the care system in general. Furthermore, our results show that the informational needs of those in need of care do not only refer to the scope of care insurance law, but to additional social security codes.