Effectiveness of Supportive Educative Programs on the Care Burden of Informal Caregivers and Perceived Social Support of the Older Adults: a Quasi-experimental Study

Abstract

Improved health facilities have increased life expectancy and longevity; the older adults population has thus been on the rise globally; and most families have taken responsibility for caring for the older adults. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of caregivers' educational program, reducing their care burden and perceived social support of the older adults in Jahrom, Iran. This is a quasi-experimental study utilizing an educational intervention implemented in 2018. The pivotal intervention was the education program for older adult’s caregivers in the field of caregiver training. The training methods included face-to-face training, pamphlet distribution and use media. Training lasted three weeks. The sample (152 caregivers and 152 older adults) were selected by snowball sampling and randomly divided into the intervention and control groups. Data collection tools included demographic information questionnaire, care burden, perceived social support scale and activities of daily living scale. Data were analyzed using Stata14 software and multiple linear regression considering perceived social support as a dependent variable based on the SEM model of path analysis. Before the educational intervention, no significant difference was observed between care burden and perceived social support in the experimental and control group (p > 0.05). However, after the intervention, the care burden score ranged from 73.72 ± 26.94 to 39.07 ± 23.049 decreased (p = 0.001) and the perceived social support score of the older adults increased from 44.45 ± 7.81 to 54.97 ± 4.09 (p = 0.001). The result show that subscales of care load include evolutionary with a coefficient of 0.87 (p = 0.015), physical 0.86(p < 0.001), social 0.84 (p < 0.001), emotional 0.87 (p < 0.001), time-dependent 0.19 (p = 0.035) and overall care burdens with a coefficient of 0.91(p < 0.001) had an effect on perceived social support. Measures of model fit (χ2 = 17.20, RMSEA = 0.087, GFI = 0.81, AGFI = 0.86), indicated that the model had an acceptable goodness of fit.Educational intervention for caregivers reduces care burden and increases the perceived social support of the older adults. Therefore, caregivers can care for the older adults with a better feeling and as a result the older adults feel more valuable and have a higher self-esteem.