The importance of listening to family carers

This article describes the themes emerging from the author’s anthology of personal accounts of caring for a family member or friend with dementia, ‘Telling tales about dementia’. It explains the importance of family carers and suggests that the knowledge of family carers should be actively sought by professionals delivering services, discussing the barriers of patient confidentiality, examples of important information from family carers being disregarded, and the role of family carers in monitoring care and challenging professionals when necessary. The author asserts that in practice it is rare for family carers to be respected as expert care partners but that when this happens it provides considerable benefits, and concludes that a cultural change is needed in the medical and social care professions to ensure that the contribution of family carers is welcomed and respected.