Nolan, M.

One of the major reasons for admission of patients to hospital in late stage disease is the inability of carers to continue to provide care at home. Specialist palliative care services have typically admitted patients for acute symptom control, terminal care and respite care to benefit them and their carers. This paper reports the results of a cross-sectional survey of inpatient respite care provision provided by specialist palliative care services and hospices in the UK.

Family caregivers, who are patientsflrelatives and friends (hereafter called carers), play a significant and arguably most important role in enabling patients to make choices about their place of care during advanced disease and in the terminal phase. Relatively little attention has been directed towards identifying the needs of carers who find themselves in this position and what interventions (if any) might best support them in continuing to provide care to the patient during the illness and dying trajectory.

Stroke is one of the major causes of disability in the United Kingdom and considerable numbers of stroke survivors need help and support from family carers, The sudden and unexpected nature of stroke means that there is very little time for family members to prepare for a caring role. This paper draws on data from 37 interviews with 14 new carers of stroke survivors and highlights the uncertainty and lack of confidence that family members experience in adopting a caring role.

The explosion of interest in young people as carers over the last decade and a half conceals the fact that there are still no reliable estimates of the number of young people with caregiving responsibilities. This is even more problematic in circumstances where the 'looked after' person has a mental health problem. In this study, we reflect on what can be done to identify, assess and support young people in these circumstances.

Objectives: To perform a psychometric evaluation of the Carers Assessment of Difficulties Index, Carers Assessment of Satisfactions Index and the Carers Assessment of Managing Index (CADI-CASI-CAMI).

Background: Changing patterns of care for terminally ill people mean that 90% of patients in the UK now spend the majority of their last year of life at home. It is now widely accepted that supporting individuals to die at home relies heavily on the availability of family carers to provide the majority of the care needed. However, one of the most common reasons for unplanned admissions near the end of life is carers’ inability to provide continuing care. One strategy to overcome these challenges has been to offer planned respite care.