Internet

Background: Many people receiving palliative care wish to die at home. Often, support from family or friends is key to ensuring that this wish is fulfilled. However, carers report feeling underprepared to undertake this role. This paper describes the process of developing a consensus and evidence based website to provide core information to help people support someone receiving palliative care on the island of Ireland.

Background: Caring for someone with dementia can be physically and emotionally difficult. Acting as a caregiver can make it difficult to access sources of support, particularly in the later stages of dementia. This paper reports the development and presents the targets (subject areas) and components of a prototype website to support family caregivers of a person with dementia towards the end of life.

Being a family carer can be rewarding but can also lead to mental and physical exhaustion as well as feelings of social exclusion and isolation. Research has shown that the use of the Internet and online forums can provide an immediate place to find information and reassurance and that forum use can be an empathetic place to share experiences and seek emotional support. This article details a systematic literature search of research on carers of people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism using the Internet.

Introduction Informal caregivers of persons with dementia have an increased risk of facing social isolation. Online social media interventions might offer a new opportunity to increase access to social support. An online social support platform, ‘Inlife’, was developed and launched in the Netherlands to enhance social support, positive interactions and information sharing in informal support networks. Objective A process evaluation was performed to evaluate the internal and external validity of the Inlife intervention.

An increasing amount of research in Europe – and beyond – has focused on the development of innovative solutions for providing support services to family carers of frail older people. This is especially the case in terms of web-based programmes. [...] There is clearly a role for well-designed and robustly supported web-based support platforms like InformCare in helping to sustain carers, deliver policy aims and ensure carer access to information, advice and support.

OBJECTIVES: To establish the feasibility of the Digital Support Platform (DSP), an internet-based, postdiagnostic tool designed for families living with a diagnosis of dementia. DESIGN: Qualitative methods using normalisation process theory as an analysis framework for semistructured interview transcriptions. SETTING: A community care setting in the South-East Scotland. PARTICIPANTS: We interviewed ten dyads of people with Alzheimer's, vascular or mixed dementia (PWD), and their family carers, who had been given and had used the DSP for at least twomonths.

Background: Caring for someone with dementia is one of the most challenging caring roles. The need for support for family caregivers has been recognized for some time but is often still lacking. With an aging population, demand on health and social care services is growing, and the population is increasingly looking to the internet for information and support.

Background: The health of informal caregivers of adults with chronic conditions is increasingly vital since caregivers comprise a large proportion of supportive care to family members living in the community. Due to efficiency and reach, internet-based interventions for informal caregivers have the potential to mitigate the negative mental health outcomes associated with caregiving.

Aims The purpose of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of the “Managing Medicines for People with Dementia” (www.dementiameds.com) website for informal carers. Background The management of medications for individuals living with a dementia by informal carers is a neglected area of care. We know that informal carers find it difficult accessing reliable and comprehensive information about medications. We also know that the Internet is a contemporary and growing medium through which consumers access health information.