Empowering carers to reconstruct their finances

This paper reports a welfare rights intervention for carers of dying people through seminars to help them organise family finances to deal with additional costs of the final illness, funeral costs and reconstruction of family finances after death. Seminars on financial affairs were provided to 103 carers and service users, and were evaluated by questionnaires. The seminars were very positively received by attenders, who felt better informed, but were not necessarily more confident in dealing with financial problems. The positive response was maintained for several months after the seminars. A number of features of the educational, business-like approach were potentially empowering, but this strategy needs to be part of a wider strategy of information-giving and support to meet the needs of carers for whom such an approach is not suitable.