Aims

The aim is to describe healthcare professionals’ perspectives on how they understand and promote older couples’ participation in everyday life when using residential respite care.

Design and Methods

Eighteen healthcare professionals with varying degrees of competence and from one residential respite care facility participated in four focus group interviews. Data were analysed through qualitative latent content analysis.

Findings

The findings revealed a broad, multifaceted view of participation and ways in which participation in everyday life is promoted by these professionals. Trustworthy relationships between professionals, spousal caregivers and clients were implicated. Promoting participation also necessitated that clients have access to meaningful activities. In addition, participation entailed an environment that supported various needs.

Conclusion

Promoting participation for older couples that are using respite care involves multifaceted perspectives that consider social–relational aspects including both the client and their spouse. Furthermore, attention is needed to the meaning a change of context between home and the respite care facility has on relationships, environments and activities in everyday life. Such an approach could benefit the couples’ shared everyday life situation and in a wider perspective, also influence their health and well‐being when ageing in place together.

The aim of this study was to explore how elderly couples, who are in need of social services in the community, act and reason over time regarding their everyday togetherness. Data were generated through repeated interviews and participant observations with three older couples. A narrative method was used for data generation and analysis. The findings present four parallel narratives illustrating how the couples, over time, strove to continue living their lives in togetherness despite the many challenges that had emerged. These narratives show the complexity and variety of strategies that the couples adopted to handle different situations of everyday life and the couples’ experiences and feelings connected to these situations. The strategies that the couples used resulted, for example, in performing more activities together in another way, using respite care and reorganizing their social interactions. The spousal caregiver had a leading role to manage day-to-day life and to initiate and perform the strategies. Simultaneously, an important reciprocity existed in their relationship that gave meaning to their efforts of sustaining togetherness. These findings give a deeper understanding of the complexity of their situation and of how meaning is created in their everyday life through enacted togetherness. The findings highlight the need for professionals within social services in the community to embrace a couple's whole situation, involving both partners. 

Background: To promote health and well-being, and to meet the desires of the growing elderly population to age in place, elderly spousal caregivers need adequate support such as respite care services. More knowledge is needed about elderly spousal caregivers’ experiences in relation to participation, which is an aspect of health that remains relatively unexplored for this group.

Aim: To explore and describe how elderly spousal caregivers experience and discuss participation in everyday life when living in shifting contexts due to the use of respite care.

Method: A grounded theory approach was used during data generation and analysis, which involved repeated focus group interviews with 12 spousal caregivers.

Results: Complexity and ambiguity was understood to imbue participation in everyday life. Being in charge of everyday life was challenging for spousal caregivers, and created a need for personal time. Respite care and home care service gave them time, although when interacting with social contexts other issues arose that influenced their own recovery.

Conclusions: A holistic ‘situation centered’ approach that focuses on the elderly couple’s life story and needs might capture a wider perspective and enable adequate support that influences their health, well-being, and participation in everyday life.