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Attitudes to telecare among older people, professional care workers and informal carers: a preventative strategy or crisis management?

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Abstract

This paper reports findings from an attitudinal survey towards telecare that emerged from 22 focus groups comprising 92 older people, 55 professional stakeholders and 39 carers. These were convened in three different regions of England as a precursor to telecare service development. The results from this study suggest that informants’ views were shaped by prior knowledge of conventional health and social care delivery in their locality, and the implication is that expectations and requirements with respect to telecare services in general are likely to be informed by wider perceptions about the extent to which community care should operate as a preventative strategy or as a mechanism for crisis management.

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Notes

  1. Each statement in the text that relates to one of the three accompanying tables is identified by a reference. p-Values of significant relationships are mentioned in the text but due to space constraints are reported in brackets

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Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was funded within EPSRC’s EQUAL programme, grant number GR/S29058/01. The consortium is led by Imperial College London, and involves UCL, Dundee University, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Thomas Pocklington Trust, Anchor Trust and Tunstall.

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Correspondence to Julienne Hanson.

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Hanson, J., Percival, J., Aldred, H. et al. Attitudes to telecare among older people, professional care workers and informal carers: a preventative strategy or crisis management?. Univ Access Inf Soc 6, 193–205 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10209-007-0075-y

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