Harder times of informal care

If informal care feels hard, here are some things to consider in your everyday life:

• Have you taken days off regularly?
• Have you accepted any help?
• Have you remembered to take care of yourself and done things that bring you joy and give you strength?
• Have you maintained a routine of regular exercise, mealtimes and sleep?
• Are there people close to you who you can ask for help and talk to about your situation?
• Have you already tried the support and services offered by associations and organisations?

If you answered yes to most of these questions and your situation still feels hard, contact your informal care client manager.

If you are worried about your personal coping and/or if the informal care situation has become harder, you should contact your informal care client manager. The client manager will assess your family’s situation and the necessary services from a professional perspective.

The following matters will be examined in the service needs assessment:

• changes in the care recipient’s functional capacity
• changes in the level of commitment required by the care and how demanding the care is
• need for other services, such as home care
• regularly using the informal carer’s days off and how suitable the service is
• informal carer’s coping and related guidance
• informal carer’s willingness to act as an informal carer

If informal care has started to require a considerably higher commitment than before and be extremely demanding, it may be time to revise the informal carer’s fee category.

You can request a review of the support fee for informal care by contacting the informal care client manager. You can also apply for a revision of the fee category with the application that you use to apply for support for informal care. The service needs assessment involves examining how demanding and how much of a commitment the care provided by the informal carer is and the care recipient’s functional capacity.

Fee category 2 - need for care round the clock

• The care recipient needs a lot of care and attention and continuous direction, supervision, support or help in daily personal functions.
• The care recipient needs care and attention at night as well. The care and attention required during the night is repeated and regular. If the nighttime need for care is low, the amount of care and supervision in the daytime must be very high.
• Without informal care, the care recipient would need 24-hour sheltered housing outside the home and would not be able to manage with just the help of home care.

Fee category 3 - stages of very demanding care

• This care category includes clients who are in a difficult transitional stage or need very demanding round-the-clock care, mainly for a short period of time (such as end-of-life care).
• The informal care is highly time-consuming and includes care measures requiring special competence or learning or is otherwise particularly demanding.
• The care recipient’s functional capacity or state of health requires a lot of physical assistance, supervision and attention from the informal carer in almost all daily functions round the clock, also several times a night.

Read more: Criteria for granting support for informal care

Go to the page: Applying for support for informal care

Transferring a loved one to care outside the home can be a difficult decision. As an informal carer, you should pay attention to your own coping and talk about the situation with your client manager, peers and loved ones. Applying for housing services becomes relevant when a loved one’s need for help and care has increased so much that safe housing cannot be arranged in their own home with the help of an informal carer, other family members or services offered at home.

• You can apply for housing services by contacting your client manager; no need to submit a written application.
• The client manager will agree with you on a service need assessment, and other loved ones can also participate in the assessment.
• The service needs assessment is carried out with a multidisciplinary approach, including a social and care-oriented assessment, and the RAI assessment tool and indicators are used to aid the process. A medical assessment of the loved one’s functional capacity is also necessary to support the assessment. For the medical assessment, the client manager may ask you to contact your physician.
• Based on the service needs assessment, an employee at Senior Info housing customer guidance makes an appealable decision on service provision in communal housing or 24-hour sheltered housing.
• Decisions on sheltered housing are always based on individual consideration in line with the wellbeing services county’s criteria for granting services. When making the decision, various options are assessed, like the possibility of continuing living at home with the help of services provided at home. The decision on sheltered housing services may be negative or positive.

Read more: Long-term round-the-clock service housing for older people

Customer fees for 24-hour sheltered housing: Client fees for social welfare and health care services

Read more about nursing homes: Nursing home portal(external link)