A job profile of home helps in the Netherlands

Owing to many developments and changes in home care in the Netherlands, a n ational study on home help services was carried out. One of the aims was to examine the job content of the six new categories of home help, the differ ences in their work and the correspondence of daily practice with formal jo b descriptions. Six home help categories were examined: alpha helps; A home helps; B caring helps; C and D carers; and specialized E carers - self-reg istration forms and weekly reports were used for data-. collection. For a p eriod of 4 weeks, 458 home helps recorded on these forms all the activities they carried out during and outside home visits. The daily work of alpha h elps, A home helps and B caring helps mainly involves housework and psyche- social/supportive activities, whilst B caring helps also carry out some per sonal care and C carers do some housework, personal care and psycho-social or supportive activities. The main work of D carers consists of personal ca re and psyche-social activities. Psyche-social activities are mainly carrie d out by specialized E carers, who also do housework, mostly together with the client. In daily practice, the four subordinate categories of home help carry out more psyche-social and reporting activities, and the three highe st categories do more housework compared with their formal job descriptions . There also appears to be an overlap in the work of A home helps and B car ing helps and in the work of C and D carers. An adjustment to formal job de scriptions relating to the daily practice of home helpers is required, as w ell as more time for the extra activities home helps have to carry out. Fin ally, the overlap between various categories of home helps needs to be reso lved whereby instead of six categories of home help, four new categories sh ould be created.