Murray, J.

Details of service receipt by 132 people diagnosed with dementia and their carers were collected in South London (boroughs of Lewisham, Camberwell, Southwark and Croydon), a geographical area served by several health and social care providers. The data collected included the Caregiver Activity Survey, which details the informal care given. This paper reports the formal and informal services received by the people with dementia at entry to the study.

It would surprise many people to know that sight loss may be more common in people with dementia; the effect of these two conditions on people's lives had never previously been investigated until recently. Here, Vanessa Lawrence and Joanna Murray present the findings of their ground‐breaking research carried out with Professor Sube Banerjee and Dr Dominic Ffytche of King's College, London into how sight loss and dementia affects the lives of older people and their carers.

Objective: As their differential needs are unknown and to inform service planning, this study (a) examined experiences of caring for adults with acquired brain injury (ABI) and (b) compared these with carers of adults with dementia.

Design: Cross-sectional postal survey. ABI carer experiences were compared with those of a previously studied group of dementia carers using equivalent instruments.