Only people with severe disabilities, low incomes and with no direct family caregivers, may receive home help.
The centres also offer home help services with older people contributing to the development of care at home.
The comments made about the home help service were negative or, at best, neutral.
Thus, they observed that older people who lived alone were five times more likely to receive home help support than those who are married.
Local studies, of older people who have been followed over time as the provision of home help has changed, support these conclusions.
By 2001, 18 per cent of those aged 80 or more years received home help and 20 per cent were institutionalised.
Later the charge for the home help was modified.
The range of services was also widened, and home help could now be combined with transport services, meals-on-wheels, day-care and chiropody services.
