Care planning at home: a way to increase the influence of older people?

Care-planning meetings represent a common method of needs assessment and decision-making practices in elderly care. Older people's influence is an important and required aspect of these practices. This study's objective was to describe and analyse older people's influence on care-planning meetings at home and in hospital.

Ten care-planning meetings were audio-recorded in the older people's homes and nine were recorded in hospital. The study is part of a project including a comprehensive continuum-of-care model. A qualitative content analysis was performed.

Care-planning meetings at home appeared to enable older people's involvement in the discussions. Fewer people participated in the meetings at home and there was less parallel talking. Unrelated to the place of the care-planning meeting, the older people were able to influence concerns relating to the amount of care/service and the choice of provider. However, they were not able to influence the way the help should be provided or organised.

Planning care at home indicated an increase in involvement on the part of the older people, but this does not appear to be enough to obtain any real influence. Our findings call for attention to be paid to older people's opportunities to receive care and services according to their individual needs and their potential for influencing their day-to-day provision of care and service.