Creating a health-promoting group for elderly couples on a home health care program.

The hospital home care social worker has a unique opportunity to develop a home-keeping, health-promoting group for frail elderly couples within his or her caseload. Through home visits, working as a filial professional, the worker enters, then strengthens the couples' pre-illness formal and informal support networks, and then goes on to create an additional informal peer support group, that meets in each other's homes. The group is capable of decreasing the chance of nursing home placement for all its members. It is proposed that home health care agencies within hospitals incorporate such groups into their regular programs.