How public home care officers reason when making a needs assessment for food distribution to homebound elderly persons in Sweden
Peer reviewed, Journal article
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Date
2013Metadata
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Original version
Global Journal of Health Science 2013, 5(5):31-40 http://doi.org/10.5539/gjhs.v5n5p31Abstract
Food distribution (FD) is a part of the public social and care service in Sweden aiming to prevent improper food
intake for persons that they are unable to do their ow
n shopping, and prepare their
own meals, and in that way
ensure reasonable standard of living.
Before a person can be granted the FD service, from any municipality, an
assessment of their individual requirements has
to be made by a public home care officer.
The aim of this study was to explore how public home
care officers reason when they make a needs assessment
for homebound elderly people.
The data was collected through individual interviews (n=1
8). The transcribed interview material was analysed by
means of the grounded theory method.
The findings showed that the public home care officers were confronted with many challenges when making an
assessment of a person’s individual needs. They are in
fluenced by their subjective feelings related to their
personal views as to what should be the right solution fo
r the individual. However, they
remained aware that they
needed to be guided by the legal requirements. Further, they described that the level of an individual’s living
standard
is a leading concept in the governing laws that they
need to interpret. Interpretation of this concept is
very subjective with the possible cons
equence that an assessment result ma
y lead to inefficient support.
In conclusion, the concept of a reasonable standard of living needs to be clearly defined, decision regarding FD
should not take long
time, need assessment and deci
sion should be based on th
e whole picture behind each
individual case and there are needs to develop general guidelines for making needs assessment. The findings in
this study have implications for public administration, nursing and gerontology.