S.O.S. Caregivers: a multi-method participatory study to co-design, piloting, and transferring a novel psycho-social service for engaging family caregivers in remote rural settings.

Background: Family caregivers are key actors in the ageing society. They play a pivotal role in enabling the possibility of elders to age in place, so to live at home for as long as possible. They also are mediators between practitioners and patients and usually provide also essential daily services for the elders. However, till now, few services have been deployed to help caregivers in their care tasks as in improving their mental health which can experience sever burden due to caregiving duties. The purpose of the study is to implement a community-based participatory research project to co-design an innovative organizational model of social services for family caregivers of elderly citizens living in the remote rural area in Italy. Methods The project included a quantitative analysis of caregivers needs, a scoping review on existing services for caregivers, co-design workshops with local stakeholders and caregivers to create a new service the piloting and a first implementation of the service and the assessment of project transferability to other contexts. Results Family caregivers play a key role in the Western care system, but at expenses of experiencing negative psycho-social consequences. The actual support is largely insufficient to the meet the needs of service users. Caregivers expressed need to be better trained, informed and supported especially between peers. The service has been successful to co-produce a psycho-social intervention that has ameliorated already existing services, creating new support service for caregivers and increasing trust among users and providers. Conclusions A dedicated training or support service for caregivers can ameliorate caregiving conditions. The service SOS Caregivers has resulted a successful co-productive service for a psyho-social intervention on family caregivers. For the future, we suggest that they should be an active partner in the process of creating new psycho-social services and not just as recipients in order to enhance a better age in place process.