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.