Caregiver Support Model & Psycho-Education Program On Empowerment: Development and Validation

Caregiver Support Model & Psycho-Education Program On Empowerment: Development and Validation

This Project aims to provide social workers and relevant human service professionals with a comprehensive, scientific, and validated service model and suggest a sustainable support framework on the working process of helping and empowering family caregivers of frail elders, reducing caregiving distress, and enhancing caregivers' quality of life.

The proposed Project consists of two parts to be conducted in 1 year. The first part focuses on the development and validation of Caregiver Support Model (CSM) with a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) study. The second part develops and validates a psycho-education program on empowering family caregivers with another Randomized Controlled design. In the first year, the Project Team have (1) developed and designed different components of the Caregiver Support Model (CSM), including a comprehensive need assessment tool, personalized Caregiver Intervention Plan Guidelines and Template, and online database on caregiver services and community resources, (2) designed a five-session psycho-education program on empowerment. The Caregiver Needs Assessment (CNA) tool was also pilot-tested with 320 community caregivers. Results from the survey, together with the systematic review on caregiver support, will form the backbone of the later CNA implementation. The working model will be validated using RCT design with 400 family caregivers recruited through 4 collaborating NGOs. At the same time, a psycho-education program on empowerment will be developed and validated using RCT design with another 190 caregivers.

Participants of CSM will be randomly assigned to CSM intervention and non-CSM intervention which is the usual practice of case handling by centre staff. Randomization will be based on centres to prevent exchange of information between the two groups, and thus causing contamination. Outcome data will be measured at 3 time-intervals: case intake, 3-month, and 6-month.

Participants of the psychoeducation program on empowerment (PPE) will be randomly assigned to the program group and the non-program group. For the former a 5-session psychoeducation program will be administered. For both groups, outcome measures will be collected at pre, post, and 3-month after post test.

CSM Inclusion Criteria:

• Primary family caregivers aged 21 or above;
• Have not received major/ intensive services in the past three months;
• Providing care for elderly aged 60 or older;
• Care recipient has at least one difficulty in activities of daily living or instrumental activities of daily living that needs help from the caregiver (scored 3 or higher on at least one of the items in the ADL/IADL Checklist).

PPE Inclusion Criteria:

• Primary family caregivers aged 21 or above;
• Family caregiving in stable situation or care recipient passed away within 2 years;
• Have not received systematic psychoeducation in the past three months.