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Foreign domestic workers providing long-term care for frail seniors at home

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2018

Sora Yasri
Affiliation:
KMT Primary Care Center, Bangkok, Thailand
Viroj Wiwanitkit
Affiliation:
Hainan Medical University, Haikou, Hainan, China
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Extract

We read the article on “‘I can't do this alone’: a study on foreign domestic workers providing long-term care for frail seniors at home” with a great interest (Tam et al., 2017). Tam et al. (2017) noted that “[i]mproving FDWs' access to training courses in eldercare, providing them with more emotional support, engaging employers to create healthy caregiving spaces at home, and improving access to senior care services can be helpful.” This finding is very interesting. In fact, FDW service is common in several countries and approved for usefulness (Østbye et al., 2013). Of interest, the FDWs are usually from the poor developing countries. It is no doubt that the FDWs usually have low education level. Therefore, the education for them has to be carefully considered. We would like to share ideas from Thailand, where several FDW from nearby countries are currently employed. At present, there are many local schools offering inexpensive short course training on home care for elderly people and this becomes a popular course for FDW to attend. Nowadays, before employment, the employers usually ask for certification for verification of the proficiency of the FDW.

Type
Letter to the Editor
Copyright
Copyright © International Psychogeriatric Association 2018 

We read the article on “‘I can't do this alone’: a study on foreign domestic workers providing long-term care for frail seniors at home” with a great interest (Tam et al., Reference Tam, Koh, Legido-Quigley, Ha and Yap2017). Tam et al. (Reference Tam, Koh, Legido-Quigley, Ha and Yap2017) noted that “[i]mproving FDWs' access to training courses in eldercare, providing them with more emotional support, engaging employers to create healthy caregiving spaces at home, and improving access to senior care services can be helpful.” This finding is very interesting. In fact, FDW service is common in several countries and approved for usefulness (Østbye et al., Reference Østbye, Malhotra, Malhotra, Arambepola and Chan2013). Of interest, the FDWs are usually from the poor developing countries. It is no doubt that the FDWs usually have low education level. Therefore, the education for them has to be carefully considered. We would like to share ideas from Thailand, where several FDW from nearby countries are currently employed. At present, there are many local schools offering inexpensive short course training on home care for elderly people and this becomes a popular course for FDW to attend. Nowadays, before employment, the employers usually ask for certification for verification of the proficiency of the FDW.

Conflict of interest

None.

References

Østbye, T., Malhotra, R., Malhotra, C., Arambepola, C. and Chan, A. (2013). Does support from foreign domestic workers decrease the negative impact of informal caregiving? Results from Singapore survey on informal caregiving. Journals of Gerontology B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 68, 609621.Google Scholar
Tam, W. J., Koh, G. C., Legido-Quigley, H., Ha, N. H. L. and Yap, P. L. K. (2017). “I can't do this alone”: a study on foreign domestic workers providing long-term care for frail seniors at home. International Psychogeriatrics, 19. doi: 10.1017/S1041610217002459 [Epub ahead of print].Google Scholar