Biography
Biography: Monika Wild
Abstract
In Austria about 5% of the population is in need of long-term care and nursing and about 82% of those in need of care live at home. The majority is cared for only by their family members and about 30 % receive support from professional home care services. The Austrian Red Cross is a big provider of home care in Austria. Together with partners (University of Vienna, Ministry of Health and others) it has developed a curriculum for “Family Health Nursing” based on the WHO concept of the same name. While there is still no overall training for Family Nursing in Austria, individual parts of the curriculum were integrated in further trainings and there are ongoing initiatives to implement the program as a whole. A need for family nurses is shown example by a study on the situation of child and adolescent carers, commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs. According to this study, more than 40,000 children and adolescents in Austria regularly have long-term care responsibilities for a family member with a chronic illness. Several projects in this context are being developed currently, example one on counseling of families with a chronically ill family member run by the Austrian Red Cross and the University of Vienna, Institute of Nursing Science. The presentation will provide an overview on the situation of long-term care and home care provision in Austria with a special focus on young carers. Also the curriculum for family health nurses as well as the current project on family counseling will be presented.