Care Living Labs Flanders' opportunities for informal care.

Goal. The Flemish government financed six Care Living Labs to tackle challenges in the care for older adults. While personnel shortages and budgetary restrictions are seen the demand for care is rising which results in a growing pressure on informal caregivers. Therefore KIO investigated if the CLL paid attention to informal care in their innovation plans.

Methodology. A qualitative study with a document analysis of the CLL proposals and semi-structured interviews was conducted. An inductive analysis was performed to explore the CLL views on informal care and to map possible effects of their innovations for informal caregivers. Thereafter these visions were compared with prevailing theories about informal care through deductive analysis.

Results. All CLL mentioned the importance of informal care. Four CLL planned to develop innovations which may support informal caregivers' ability to care or decrease their burden directly. However all CLL will develop innovations with an indirect effect on informal care. Innovations will be developed that decrease biopsychosocial burden such as financial and time efforts and improve social support, cooperation with professional caregivers, knowledge and skills of informal caregivers. Unfortunately no innovations aim to increase physical and psychological strengths of the informal caregivers. Remarkably only five CLL planned to include informal caregivers in their testing panel.

Conclusion. All CLL attempt to support several aspects of informal care. However more innovations should be developed with the possibility to increase the physical and psychological strength of informal caregivers. CLL should also involve informal caregivers in the development of their innovations.