Caregiving ability of parents in three latent classes
As shown in Table 3, parents in all the 3 classes had a higher level of GAC than the other domains of caregiving ability, indicating that caregivers were more capable in general approaches of caregiving than other aspects of caregiving. These results showed that all parents had confidence in providing daily routine care and offering timely help when their children needed. In the “medium caregiving ability” class and “low caregiving ability” class, parents’ lowest caregiving ability was ASR, which indicated that the most difficult part of taking care of their children in these two classes was to appraise supportive resources. While in the “high caregiving ability” class, caregivers’ lowest caregiving ability is DCA, which indicated that the greatest difficulty in caregiving in this class was cognitive related, such as the assessment of the children’s condition and the observation of changes in the children’s condition, learning information on disease treatment and caring for the children, and contacting with the professional healthcare providers. The measurement tool, HMFCGSS, is a self-reported scale with six domains. A high total score of HMFCGSS may not necessarily mean that the parents have high caregiving ability in all the aspects. Professional healthcare providers need to pay attention to whether the parents have low ability in any aspect of caregiving, and what targeted support need to be provided to the parents.