Respite care models and practices for persons with intellectual disability: A scoping review

Families are the primary caregivers for persons with intellectual disability (ID), offering informal support to ensure community living. Ensuring families are adequately supported is key to reduce the financial, physical, mental and social toll which long-standing inadequately supported care giving may evoke. Respite care is such a support service offered to caregivers and care-recipients with ID.

Part of a larger study aimed at developing a respite care service framework for persons with ID for South Africa, the review aimed to elucidate what principles and practices inform current respite care services for this population globally.

The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) scoping review framework guided the review. Databases were searched using key and surrogate terms for relevant literature published from 2006 to 2021.

Thirty-one sources met the inclusion criteria from 417 screened sources of evidence. These were published between 2006 and 2020, and included grey and peer-reviewed articles, the latter mostly mixed design. Information on respite care service characteristics, principles, practices, guidelines, evaluations and impacts were found for high- but not low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs).

There is an existing knowledge base that can be drawn on to inform the development of quality respite care. The lack of published information on respite care in LMICs necessitates further research to ensure contextually appropriate respite care developments in these settings.

This study contributes to the knowledge base on respite care for persons with ID and points out the research gap in LMICs.