Models of long-term care use among older people with disabilities in Taiwan: institutional care, community care, live-in migrant care and family care

Abstract

The four main models of long-term care (LTC) for older people in Taiwan are institutional care, community & home-based care, live-in migrant care, and family care. This study aims to examine the factors associated with the four above-mentioned LTC models, using the Andersen model as its framework for analysis. Data were from the 2005 National Taiwanese Health Interview Survey (n=30,680) and in this study 592 over-65-year-old persons who require personal care in daily life were included. The findings showed that the majority of older people with care needs lived with family and were cared only by their family. The second largest group were those older people who were cared by migrant care workers and the third group used institutional care. Only a very small proportion used community/home-based care services. If older people had intensive care needs, they either hired migrant care workers or used institutional care, depending on social and economic backgrounds. Multinomial logistic regression results showed that the way how disabled older people use different LTC models was affected by three components of the Andersen model: their needs (level of ADL and IADL), predisposing factors (age, education) and enabling factors (family networks). Results suggest that there is a need for LTC policies in Taiwan to provide more available and accessible community/home-based care services, particularly for older people with intensive care needs, in order to support their ‘ageing in place’ and to decrease the use of migrant care workers.