INTRODUCTION Existential suffering in patients with serious illness significantly impacts quality of life, yet it remains a challenge to define, assess, and manage adequately. Improving upon understanding and practice in the existential domain is a topic of interest for palliative care providers. METHODS As a quality improvement project, our palliative care team created an existential assessm...

This article describes and evaluates cash-for-care programmes for older people in four European countries, namely Home-Care Grants in Ireland, Direct Payments in the United Kingdom (England), Service Vouchers in Finland and Personal Budgets in The Netherlands. The purpose is to raise understanding of the background and reasons for the introduction of cash-for-care programmes and their impact on...

OBJECTIVES It is not known whether cumulative 'cash plus care' interventions can reduce adolescent HIV-infection risks in sub-Saharan Africa. This study investigated whether parental AIDS and other environmental adversities increase adolescent HIV-risk behaviour and whether social protection provision of 'cash' or integrated 'cash plus care' reduces HIV-risk behaviour. DESIGN A prospective ob...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To describe the uses of the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in south east London and to highlight users' views about the system of cash versus care provision for people with disabilities. DESIGN Face to face interviews between users of the fund and an interviewer to discuss cash for care, using a structured questionnaire. SETTING Interviews took place in the person's home. ...

Moral Hazard and Cash Benefits in Long-Term Home Care ∗ This paper tests empirically for ex-post moral hazard in a system based on demand-side subsidies. In the Netherlands, demand-side subsidies were introduced in 1996. Clients receive a cash benefit to purchase the type of home care (housework, personal care, support with mobility, organisational tasks or social support) they need from the ca...

BACKGROUND Young adults with disabilities face numerous barriers to independence and achieving markers of adulthood. Qualitative evidence suggests that flexible, self-directed budgets for purchasing home and community-based services might help fill an identified service gap and help improve the transition to adulthood for this group. OBJECTIVE Our aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of the ...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the impact of Mexico's conditional cash transfer programme on the quality of health care received by poor women. Quality is measured by maternal reports of prenatal care procedures received that correspond with clinical guidelines. METHODS The data describe retrospective reports of care received from 892 women in poor rural communities in seven Mexican states. The women...

As long-term care (LTC) expenditures have risen, policymakers have sought ways to control costs while maintaining consumer satisfaction. Concurrently, there is increasing interest within the aging and disability communities in consumer-directed care. The Cash and Counseling Demonstration and Evaluation (CCDE) seeks to increase consumer direction and control costs by offering a cash allowance an...