Historically, informal caregiving literature has focused on caregivers' reports of the burden associated with the work of care. Increasingly, however, both care givers and care receivers are beginning to accentuate the positive aspects of care in the home and identify work strategies that work for them. This study sought to examine the relationship between use of three care-related work strategies (delegating, developing competence, and positive problem orientation) and the following two outcome measures: mood disturbance and subjective well-being. Significant correlations were found between usage of each of these strategies and desired outcomes, indicating value in using these strategies. Different conditions of the variables of care receiver functional status, kin relationship, and gender were found to influence the degree of correlation between work strategies and desired outcomes, suggesting the need to individualize implementation of these strategies for each caregiver/care receiver situation.
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