Jiscmail

This research looks at the experiences and preferences of low-income Caribbean, Pakistani and Somali people in balancing work and care responsibilities. It examines the particular challenges faced by these ethnic minority groups, and the challenges for employers and policy. It found that:

A variety of forces are pushing hospitals to improve their discharge processes to reduce readmissions. Researchers at the Boston University Medical Center (BUMC) developed and tested the Re-Engineered Discharge (RED). Research showed that the RED was effective at reducing readmissions and posthospital emergency department (ED) visits. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality contracted with BUMC to develop this toolkit to assist hospitals, particularly those that serve diverse populations, to replicate the RED.

Demographic change is demanding new responses from our society, workplaces, public services and family life as our population and workforce age. As the number of working age people caring for older loved ones with health conditions such as dementia rises, the impact on people’s ability to work is becoming an increasingly critical issue for employers. Half the UK’s 6.5 million carers are juggling paid work alongside caring.

Focus On: Social care for older people by Sharif Ismail, Ruth Thorlby and Holly Holder, tracks a period of real-terms reductions in Government revenue allocations to local authorities, who provide publicly-funded social care.

The research, which is part of the Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation’s QualityWatch programme, reveals that most local authorities are tightly rationing social care for the over-65s in response to cuts, resulting in significant drops in the number of people receiving services.

Context: In response to increasing care needs, the reform or development of long-term care (LTC) systems has become a prominent policy issue in all European countries. Cash-for-care schemes—allowances instead of services provided to dependents—represent a key policy aimed at ensuring choice, fostering family care, developing care markets, and containing costs.

Despite encouragement from policy and research for drug services to involve family members in drug users' treatment and support families and carers in their own right, family members' involvement with services remains limited. Research to date offers limited insights into why barriers and tensions are perceived the way they are and reveals little about values and perspectives that underpin relationships between family members and drug services.

The psychosocial pathways underlying associations between benefit finding and quality of life are poorly understood. Here, we examined associations between benefit finding, social support, optimism and quality of life in a sample of 84 caregivers. Results revealed that quality of life was predicted by benefit finding, optimism and social support.

Dementia disproportionately affects women, but their experiences and voices are missing from research and literature. This project aimed to inspire people to think differently about women and dementia by using stories and reflections from individual women to inform the debate in a unique, inspiring and insightful way. The report shows: