Circle of Care
Social networks of personal care are the Circles of Care.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Social networks of personal care are the Circles of Care.
Last updated
Was this helpful?
With an aging population that continues to grow and the number of people living with chronic disease increasing, health care is shifting from hospital to community and family. Family members are key to the delivery of long-term care for patients and loved ones.
Circles of Care is the space in between self-care and the medical-expert space, where people are creating their well-being strategies. In your circle of care your partner, family, friends, and neighborhood help you to maintain your daily health and well-being. These personal well-being networks are constructed from a person’s experience and contacts. These experiences heighten general awareness of health and require greater levels of support, especially in growing a social network of personal care.
Circles of Care Activators are people who can play an active role in your circle of care. These include your family, partner, friends, neighborhood, and work colleagues, among others.
The research suggests that most people have some form of supportive network, "spheres of support" or Circles of Care. These circles are not solutions for health but networks that have to be built, shared, and maintained. The central feature of the Circles of Care model and health as a social activity is the network. The network is key and is, in effect, the product of the service. At the moment, healthcare systems are improving the delivery of solutions to problems, but this new model provides a "support space" before the problems arise and the capacity to respond when they do.
A Care Circle is an informally created, often spontaneous group of people who come together in support of a person, cause, community, or event. In the Ability Hub world of care, you may assign various roles to people in your circle of care. While the roles align directly with the expectations and engagement expected in social settings, the app also uses various roles to customize the functionality and access to various parts of the app.
The circle of care in our app revolves around a patient. The patient, client, or family member is someone whose welfare and quality of life are expected to be improved by providing appropriate social and mental support. Usually, a patient, if he or she has a phone and is capable of using the phone apps, is invited by a caregiver to establish a digital support group or circle of care for this person. However, a patient may also sign up and establish her own circle of care.
When a person directly downloads the app and signs up for the first time, they are assigned the role of a caregiver. A patient, however, can easily change her role as a 'Patient' and then subsequently invite other people in her group as either a caregiver or a contact.
A caregiver is a person who helps someone else with daily activities, such as bathing, eating, taking medicine, or running errands. Caregivers can be family members, friends, neighbors, social workers, health professionals, or members of the clergy. They can provide care in a variety of settings, including at home, in a hospital, or in other healthcare settings.
Caregiver burden is defined as the strain or load borne by a person who cares for a chronically ill, disabled, or elderly family member. Caregiver burden is related to the well-being of both the patient and caregiver; therefore, understanding the attributes associated with caregiver burden is important. The Ability Hub app is primarily aimed at the caregivers and provides them with tools to understand, measure, and then use social support to alleviate this burden thereby leading to enhanced quality of care to the patient.
A caregiver in the Ability Hub app is most likely expected to be the initiator of a new circle of care. A caregiver in the Ability Hub platform has access to several functionalities including inviting more people to join the circle, initiating requests for help on behalf of the patient, and in general acting as a medical or health proxy for the person being cared for.
The best care is always provided by your friends, well-wishers, and even your neighbors. You can create a small, closed group that you can rely on to help contribute to supplement your effort, help provide respite care, or even simply share updates with them.
The people in the 'contact' role can be kept aware of your progress, may see your posts and also respond to your requests for occasional help. Either a patient himself, or a caregiver may invite someone to join the circle of care for a patient. You can invite a person to join the circle of care by specifying the patient, and the role the invitee is expected to play.
A circle of care will always have a patient, possibly one or more caregivers, and an optional group of contacts (none or more) that could be relied upon for various support.