Housing Design and Community Care: How Home Modifications Reduce Care Needs of Older People and People with Disability

Phillippa Carnemolla and Catherine Bridge
Additional contact information
Phillippa Carnemolla: School of Built Environment, Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney, Harris St, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia
Catherine Bridge: Faculty of Built Environment, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW 2052, Australia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 11, 1-12

Abstract: The extent to which housing design can minimise levels of community caregiving has remained largely unmeasured. This paper reports the potential for home modifications to reduce caregiving in the peoples’ homes, particularly older people and people with a disability. It contributes to new knowledge in understanding how housing can play a role in community caregiving and acknowledges the role of the built environment in managing care levels in ageing societies. This paper analyses self-reported care data from 157 Australian community care recipients (average age: 72 years) who had received home modifications within the past 6 months. A before/after comparison of care provided revealed that home modifications reduced hours of care provided by 42% per week. More detailed analysis revealed that the positive association of home modifications with care reduction is stronger with informal care (46% reduction) followed by formal care (16% reduction). These results suggest the role that home modifications, and housing design in general, play in reducing care needs in a community setting.

Keywords: housing; informal care; formal care; home modification; disability; ageing; accessibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/11/1951/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/11/1951/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:11:p:1951-:d:236391

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().