Care dependence and services planning

For policy purposes as well as for the provision of individual care, it is relevant to know which individual characteristics have an impact upon the level of care dependence. For policy purposes, it is preferable to predict the level of care dependence as efficiently as possible. This study of residents of institutions and group homes for people with mental handicap showed that profoundly mentally handicapped residents are almost all totally dependent upon care: additional information about the individual characteristics of this group is superfluous. The results of logistic regression analyses for residents with severe or mild mental handicap showed that age, gender and aetiological diagnosis (Down's syndrome or other) do not have significant predictive power. For the level of care dependence, adding the score on Activities of Daily Life (ADL) to the various models improved the predictive power. It depends on the level of mental handicap and on the level of care dependence which one wants to predict which other individual characteristics have to be included in order to improve predictive power.