The purpose of this study is to understand the essence of
home-visiting care helpers’ caring experience with the demented
elderly. Therefore, we had in-depth interviews with 6 care helpers
who had experiences of providing home-visiting care service to the
demented elderly at long-term care institutions. We analyzed the
data using Colaizzi’s phenomenological method. As a result, we
derived a total of 122 meaning units, 23 sub-topics, and 7 essential
topics. The 7 essential topics were analysed as follows: 'not wanting
to engage in looking after the elderly', 'having compassion to the
unprotected elderly', 'becoming a partner in the life of the elderly',
'suffering from stress from their families', 'feeling like giving up',
'redetermine to make a commitment to the elderly caring job', and
'feeling a sense of shame not providing the elderly with ideal care',
Based on the results, we suggested as follows: First, the range of
available home-visiting care service must be specified in detail
depending on the beneficiary's condition and their accompanying
dementia in deciding long-term care grading. Second, homevisiting
care helper’s wages must be differentiated in accordance
with elderly’s health status and their accompanying of dementia.
Third, mandatory professional training on dementia must be
carried out for entire care helpers.