CAREN logo

You are here

  1. Home
  2. The art of maintaining everyday life: collaboration among older parents, their adult children, and health care professionals in reablement

The art of maintaining everyday life: collaboration among older parents, their adult children, and health care professionals in reablement

Background: A shift in the work-divide among generations and an ageing population have altered the balance of care and support between families and welfare states. Although state policy has increasingly acknowledged that older adults ageing in place receive support from family members, how adult children perceive their collaboration with their parents and health care professionals in reablement services remains unclear. The aim of this study is to identify how adult children perceive the collaboration between older parents, family members, and health care professionals in reablement services. Methods: This study has a qualitative research design with a constructivist grounded theory approach. In total, 15 adult children - 6 sons, 8 daughters, and a daughter-in-law, aged 47-64 years - whose parents had received reablement services, participated in in-depth interviews. Results: Our findings clarify how children and their older parents' reablement services can collaborate to support how the adult children manage and maintain both their own and their parents' everyday lives. The core category derived from our data analysis was the art of maintaining everyday life, with four subcategories indicating the different dimensions of that process: doing what is best for one's parents, negotiating the dilemmas of everyday life, managing parents' reablement, and ensuring the flow of everyday life. Conclusion: To promote collaboration among older adults, their children, and health care professionals in reablement, health care professionals need to proactively involve older adults' family members in the reablement processes, particularly because older adults and their children do not always express all of their care-related needs to reablement services. 

Access source material through DOI

Key Information

Type of Reference
Jour
Type of Work
Journal article
Publisher
Dovepress
ISBN/ISSN
1178-2390
Publication Year
2019
Journal Titles
Journal of Multidisciplinary Healthcare
Volume Number
12
Start Page
269
End Page
280