TY - JOUR
T1 - Interventions to Reduce the Impact of Client Death on Home Care Aides
T2 - Employers’ Perspectives
AU - Tsui, Emma K.
AU - Franzosa, Emily
AU - Reckrey, Jennifer M.
AU - LaMonica, Marita
AU - Cimarolli, Verena R.
AU - Boerner, Kathrin
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research was supported in part by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York. Dr. Tsui was supported by a K01 grant from NIOSH (K01OHO11645) at the time this article was written.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2021.
PY - 2022/2
Y1 - 2022/2
N2 - For home care agencies and aides, the death of clients has important, yet often unrecognized, workforce implications. While research demonstrates that client death can cause grief and job insecurity for aides, we currently lack home care agencies’ perspectives on this issue and approaches to addressing it. This study uses key informant interviews with leaders from a diverse sample of eight New York City home care agencies to explore facilitators and barriers to agency action. We found that agencies engaged primarily in a range of informal, reactive practices related to client death, and relatively few targeted and proactive efforts to support aides around client death. While leaders generally acknowledged a need for greater aide support, they pointed to a lack of sustainable home care financing and policy resources to fund this. We recommend increased funding to support wages, paid time off, and supportive services, and discuss implications for future research.
AB - For home care agencies and aides, the death of clients has important, yet often unrecognized, workforce implications. While research demonstrates that client death can cause grief and job insecurity for aides, we currently lack home care agencies’ perspectives on this issue and approaches to addressing it. This study uses key informant interviews with leaders from a diverse sample of eight New York City home care agencies to explore facilitators and barriers to agency action. We found that agencies engaged primarily in a range of informal, reactive practices related to client death, and relatively few targeted and proactive efforts to support aides around client death. While leaders generally acknowledged a need for greater aide support, they pointed to a lack of sustainable home care financing and policy resources to fund this. We recommend increased funding to support wages, paid time off, and supportive services, and discuss implications for future research.
KW - end of life
KW - home care
KW - qualitative methods
KW - stress
KW - workforce
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100499901&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0733464821989859
DO - 10.1177/0733464821989859
M3 - Article
C2 - 33522367
AN - SCOPUS:85100499901
SN - 0733-4648
VL - 41
SP - 332
EP - 340
JO - Journal of Applied Gerontology
JF - Journal of Applied Gerontology
IS - 2
ER -