Et, Al

Social workers have made a significant contribution to the development and delivery of palliative care. Both palliative care and social work are rapidly evolving but, given their changing contexts and increasing workloads, can they sustain compatibility? Advances in treatment of life-threatening illness mean that people live longer in a period of palliative care.

Background  This survey study aims to examine the prevalence and factors associated with depressive symptoms among primary older female family carers of adults with intellectual disabilities (ID).

This study aims to: estimate the costs borne by families caring for patients with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD); to contextualise results to recent initiative; and consider the methodological problems of estimating costs of care. Semi-structured interviews and a follow-up postal questionnaire, eliciting costs to families both before and after the patient's death, were carried out participants included 19 families of patients with vCJD. Cost profiles were constructed, detailing key time and financial costs associated with their relative's illness and death accursing to families.

Objectives: To determine and prioritise what information dementia caregivers wish to know at the time of diagnosis and later on in the illness, and in what form this information should be presented.

Method: 100 carers were recruited from community mental health teams (CMHT) and a memory clinic (MC). A semi-structured Carer Interview was administered covering possible symptoms and management.

The imperative for participation in social work education has led to consideration of the ways in which service users’ and carers’ voices can best be heard by students. At Glyndŵr University, this debate has resulted in the development of a service user and carer-led module which will introduce students to a variety of creative approaches as a way of telling narratives of experience. In preparation for the module, a pilot project was run to assess the particular benefits of using animation for this purpose.

This research, commissioned by the Pension, Disability and Carers Service (PDCS), was conducted over a six month period in a context of government initiatives to increase levels of support to low income pensioners.

This article reviews the development of a social model of disability and considers whether or not it provides a helpful framework for dementia care. The social model has not yet fully included cognitive impairment, although considerable work has been carried out with regard to learning disability.

Objective: To characterise the differences in caregiver distress between carers of people diagnosed with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and people with Alzheimer's disease (AD), with a view to differentiating and improving support for caregivers. Methods: This study is a part of two larger Norwegian studies, DemVest (n = 265) and The Norwegian Dementia Register (n = 2220), with data from caregivers and people diagnosed with AD (n = 100) and DLB (n = 86) between 2005 and 2013. The average age was 74.9 years (SD = 7.8).

Satisfaction with respite care may be bound up with a variety of factors. The interaction of social support with ratings of a carer's satisfaction with respite care has not been explored in published work. The present authors postulated that social support, both during caring and during periods of relief from caring whilst in receipt of respite care, would be associated with greater satisfaction with respite care. They embarked upon a pilot study of carers who were looking after dependants with dementia, a particularly demanding form of care.

This briefing provides an overview of the research literature on the barriers currently facing black and minority ethnic (BME) people in accessing dementia care services. It also looks at some of the ways in which services can become better at responding to the needs of (BME) people in their local area. The briefing begins by outlining the main issues and why it is important to address existing barriers.