Adult day care programs: maintaining a therapeutic triad

Adult day care programs are rapidly becoming an alternative long term care service offered by nursing homes, community hospitals, and community agencies. For an adult day care program to be most effective a therapeutic triad needs to exist between formal caregivers, the elderly client and the informal family caregivers. The purpose of this descriptive study was to identify the profile of Minnesota adult day care programs and to explore family involvement patterns. Data were analyzed from 87 percent of the operating programs (n = 48). Seventy-five percent of the programs operated from a social/health center model. About 75 percent of the programs had a staff of less than five persons and over 60 percent of them enrolled less than 20 clients. Programs reported that families were usually involved in activities such as initiating client placement, participating in the admission assessment, visiting the day care center and participating in client evaluation. Day care programs frequently sponsored social activities, counseling sessions and support groups for family members. There was a significant positive relationship between the composition of the day care staff, the number of family and client services and the family involvement patterns.