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Paying Friends, Family Members, or Strangers to Be Home-Based Personal Assistants

How Satisfied Are Consumers?

University of California, Los Angeles, matthias{at}ucla.edu

A.E. Benjamin

University of California, Los Angeles

This study describes consumers who hire friends, family members, or strangers as paid personal assistants and compares service satisfaction among the three groups. From surveying 511 consumers of self-directed home care services, the authors found that consumers who hire friends as workers are younger and more educated than consumers who hire family members and strangers, and they are more impaired than consumers with strangers as workers. The friend cohort experiences more stability with their personal assistants than does the stranger cohort but not as much stability as the family cohort. On some dimensions of consumer satisfaction, friends as workers are perceived by consumers to be either the same as or better than strangers, but they also are perceived as either the same as or worse than family workers. Using friends as paid workers is an important resource. Researchers and policy makers should further explore this approach because the need for home-based personal assistance continues to increase.

Key Words: personal assistance • consumer direction • family caregivers • paid caregiving • home care • satisfaction

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