Grant: Catalyst Grant: Primary and Community-Based Healthcare

Home care is a vital support that helps people with health care needs that they cannot manage on their own to live independently in their own homes. Although the needs for home care services have been increasing steadily over the past few decades, the supply of home care has not kept up with demand. Those who are able to afford private home care services may hire providers to meet their needs, but this is not an option for people with low incomes. We know very little about the home care services that are required by and provided to persons with low incomes. Our proposal seeks to support a team of researchers and practitioners to augment research capacity, generate preliminary data and engage the community in studying ways to community care for persons with low incomes. A graduate student would be supported to conduct thesis work related to equity, access and integration of home care services with other health care settings. Literature reviews and meeting with national and international experts would strengthen our research capacity. Generation of preliminary data related to equity, access and integration of home care services within the local health region would allow us to gauge the feasibility of our approaches and generate ideas for further work in this area. A two day stakeholder workshop would involve 30-40 home care service users (patients and families) and service providers representing home care, primary care, ED and acute care settings, as well as municipal and provincial government officials.Findings from the pilot studies would be shared with participants, who would also have the chance to raise key issues that may not have been identified in the pilot studies. An action plan would be developed that would be translated into a subsequent proposal for more comprehensive funding.