Family Involvement and Resident Psychosocial Status in Long Term Care

A number of studies have sought to identify positive correlates of quality of life in residential long-term care. One aspect of the long-term care experience that is hypothesized to improve residents' psychosocial well-being is family involvement (e.g., providing personal and socioemotional care, collaborating with staff). Descriptive qualitative and quantitative efforts emphasize that, contrary to prior belief, family members remain involved in their relatives' lives following the move to a nursing home. However, it remains largely unknown how family involvement operates in residential environments that exist on other points of the long-term care continuum (e.g., assisted living facilities, family care homes/adult foster homes), or how such involvement affects the psychosocial status of residents. The goal of this pilot study is to test and refine a protocol that examines the relationships between various facility-level indicators and the range and intensity of family involvement. In addition, the influence of family involvement on resident psychosocial status will be ascertained. Relying on a conceptual framework developed for the purposes of this study, the research team will interview 75 resident-family-staff triads and facility administrators from 5 nursing homes, 5 assisted living facilities, and 15 family care homes randomly selected from all licensed/certified long- term care facilities in the state of Kentucky. These interviews will collect extensive information on residential setting (family-orientation, quality of staff-resident relations, admit/retain criteria, level of care, size, location, facility diversity, facility type), family involvement (ADL care, IADL care, socioemotional support, discussing care with staff, monitoring care), and resident psychosocial status (self-esteem, positive/negative affect, sense of belonging, and sense of aesthetics). Following an analysis of data quality and reliability, bivariate correlations and ANOVAs will be conducted to determine how: 1) various components of residential setting are associated with different types of family involvement; and 2) dimensions of family involvement are related to residents' psychosocial status. The proposed analysis will intially test the conceptual model, refine the interview protocols, and yield excellent pilot data for the development of a major longitudinal study on the importance of family involvement in various long-term care environments.