Improving home care quality: an individual-centered approach

Evidence is presented for important individual differences between older people concerning what they value as high quality service from Home Care. A case is made for improving service quality through systematically consulting each service user about their own preferences and seeking to fulfil these requests on an individual basis. This contrasts with setting uniform quality standards for all older Home Care clients, based on most commonly expressed preferences. Evidence is cited from individual interviews with older Home Care service users and from an experiment in modifying older people’s services through briefing Home Care staff on the preferences of individual clients. Issues in developing this approach are discussed.