ABSTRACT

Objectives

Assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on people who live in residences, especially geriatric, dependency and mental health care homes Catalonia, as well as their families, workers and organizations.

Develop proposals for improvement at the level of care, training, organisational, structural and systemic, based on the lessons learned, build proposals for improvement care and care model for these people.

The fundamental components of the project

Description of the situation (literature and documentary review), review of international experiences of LTC policies in 6 countries, description of the residential sector and the impact in Catalonia, description of the structure of the participating centers, characteristics of the resident population , description of the state of health and job satisfaction of professionals, of the impact of COVID-19 on centers and people (residents, family members, professionals, members of management), with perspective of gender in all cases, assessment of the perceived quality of care by residents, family members and professionals based on ACP parameters and the development of improvement proposals and indicators.

Methodologies used

Multimethodological and have included the review (non-systematic) of literature and documentary, realist review, review of global quantitative data in Catalonia (Big data), semi-structured survey of referents from 6 countries (benchmarking), descriptive structure of the centers’ characteristics, quantitative of characteristics to residents, family members, professionals and members of the management, observation, qualitative interviews with residents, family members and professionals, semi-structured, structured and open interviews with 160 experts and stakeholders, quality

assessment survey based on the ACP dimensions, of improvement proposals by dimensions and by areas (global sector, organization, care for residents, care for family members and leadership) and, finally, preparation of the proposal for indicators.

Conclusions

The project has concluded with 200 specific improvement proposals with measurement indicators, and emphasizing that the relevance, the quantitative and qualitative dimension, and the complexity of the challenge of improving residential care – in a context of population aging and changes in family support capacity – inevitably requires:

1. A powerful, innovative, clear national approach and institutional definition of the vision of a new model of care, organization, financing, and provision, as well as professional skills.

2. An approach shared and co-created with people, institutions and organizations in the sector.

3. Institutional and sector leadership, accompanied by specific leadership in centres.

4. A radical change in the social and cultural position of the sector towards being a benchmark for caring attention, respected, valued and cared for.

5. A funding model plan and gradual structural conversion.

The set of these measures should position the residential sector as one of the ethical reference points for the dignity of society