[Family guidance for the elderly: a family group care at home].

Abstract

The Elderly Psychiatry Family Guidance Centre, set up in 2009 in the French Rhône department, is a hospital-based team working at the request of professionals in the network. It is aimed at families in which a member over the age of 65 is experiencing a loss of autonomy that is beyond the family's resources. Combining psychodynamic and systemic tools, this group treatment focuses on psychological aspects and elements of everyday reality. It encourages family communication in order to restore balance. It activates specific levers: intervention during the crisis, modularity of the framework, work on the environment and the network. It offers six renewable sessions, at home, and summaries with partners. The system has temporal and geographical limitations. This experiment shows that it is possible to offer family care that can be linked to individual care, can be identified in the professional network, and is accessible to families who are not initially interested. This finding opens up the possibility of spreading the scheme.