A Comparative Study on Family Care in Korea and Scotland

Abstract

The objective of this study is to explore differences of family care between Scotland and Korea focusing on social welfare institutions. The majority of previous studies have focused on cultural aspects of family care such as Confucianism and familialism in East Asia. However, this study focuses on institutional differences in two countries in the area of family care for older people with dementia. This study had a semi-structured interview with fourteen family carers in Suwon and Edinburgh to better understand the impact of culture and institution. There were similarities and differences in the family care. With regard to similarities, type, responsibility and motivation of caregiving were very similar in both areas. In fact, this illustrates that the motivation of Koreans may not necessarily be stronger filial piety than that of Scottish people. On the other hand, differences were found in living arrangement, financial care, cognition care, care burden and family networks. The result of this study shows that the institutional differences create different attitudes towards caring for older people with dementia.