New approaches to residential continuing care for frail seniors include a shift toward more social care models that involve hiring multiskilled workers and expectations of family involvement as partners in care. Recall and stylized time-use methods were used to assess the types of tasks and amounts of service provided by family and staff caregivers in three models of care. Findings are that family members provide about 30 per cent of on-site services to residents. Family members spend most time in enhancing well-being, while staff spend most time in housework. Patterns of care differ across Adult Family Living, Assisted Living and Dementia Care settings. Sustainability of these patterns of care depends upon adequacy of staffing and reasonable expectations about family resources.
