Social isolation is often associated with a strong dependency on professional facilities. The idea behind this is that people who have little informal support in their immediate surroundings tend to rely on formal help or appeal more often to professional facilities than people with enough sources of support. This chapter focuses on the relation between the availability of informal support and the use of formal facilities. Are people with a small network or a network that cannot provide the desired support more dependent on formal facilities than others? And how do they experience this dependency?
To answer these questions, we will examine the relations between the informal support people can expect from their personal network and the use of professional facilities. Because not everyone has the same need for support or help, we will discuss several forms of vulnerability that can lead to a higher use of facilities. We will also compare the personal network of people with a specific care or help need with the network of persons who are not vulnerable. We will proceed to analyze the relationships between vulnerability, the personal network and the use of professional facilities. Finally, we will discuss views on the dependency on professional facilities. We end with the main conclusions. The chapter starts with discussing relevant concepts and definitions.