Respite care nurses should invest greater effort in supporting informal carers. The service should be developed as an integral part of home care for older people. Nurses and informal carers should see each other as partners who share a common goal, i.e. the well-being of the entire family.

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BACKGROUND: Advancing informal caregivers' and recipients' health and functional capacity and enabling living at home are significant objectives in Finnish society. The purpose of this project is to create a model for supporting the welfare services of informal caregivers digitally. METHOD: The data were collected in late 2017 by interviewing the informal caregivers (N = 19) who took part in the project in one city (n = 9) and one rural municipality (n = 10). They filled the 15D quality of life instrument with added questions before and after intervention and evaluated the digital service after seven months of piloting. The recipients (n = 19) also filled a questionnaire on a memory game device. RESULTS: Informal caregivers considered their quality of life good, though approximately half felt mildly depressed and distressed. Their wishes for tablet programs included peer support, lectures, and live entertainment. Nearly all caregivers recommended the digital service to others despite technical problems. The difficulty of the game divided the recipients' opinions. A functional service model is presented as a summary of the project. CONCLUSIONS: It is paramount to move the entire service to a single platform with large shortcuts to each segment. This will enable the user to easily use the programs and contact people.

The patients were predominantly satisfied with the outpatient care. Better access to information improved patient satisfaction. Attention should be directed to the content of information in patient repeat visits.