Support Services for Informal Caregivers: First Results of Expert Interviews with Providers in the City of Vienna.

The burden of informal caregivers can be potentially reduced with support services targeting them primarily. But when it comes to the utilization of such services, there are still barriers on the side of suppliers and demanders that leads to the fact that too less concerned people are making use of it. Expert interviews were done with offering institutions in the City of Vienna to find out more about the types of offered support services, consideration of special circumstances, utilization behavior, awareness, benefit, costs and future development. This paper is presenting the preliminary results of the data analysis of the first round of interviews that shows the status quo of utilization of support services for informal caregivers in the City of Vienna.

Modes of independence while informal caregiving.

This paper is about understanding and conceptualizing the notion of independence in the context of caregiving. Based on the current studies and on our ethnographic and design research in an AAL project (TOPIC) we introduce a model of independence consisting of four dimensions: action, finance, decision, and emotion. These interrelated dimensions are described and discussed in the setting of informal caregiving. Some additional examples are shown to illustrate how to reduce the dependence of informal caregivers before concluding the paper.