Miscellaneous

Having briefly reviewed current calls for fundamental change within adult social care, this report has sought to explore the potential social and economic benefits of future reform.

Caregivers of loved ones with chronic illnesses experience an uncontrollable challenge with potentially negative behavioral and medical consequences. Extensive research has demonstrated immune and endocrine regulation can be significantly disrupted by negative behavioral factors based on both animal models and human studies. However, fewer studies have focused on how psychosocial interventions might reverse the negative consequences of stressors such as caregiving. The distress of caring for individuals with cancer has only recently begun to receive attention.

This paper will focus on the experiences of former carers; individuals who were previously unpaid carers of older people but for whom caregiving has ceased. Caring has been conceptualised as a ‘career’ that is characterised by key events, one of which is the end of caregiving and the transition into the post-caring period. Few temporal models of care include the post-caring period, yet this stage is an integral part of former carers’ experiences. It is estimated that approximately 2 million people each year in the UK, become former carers.

Research on family caregiving has focused on the quantitative as opposed to the qualitative investigation of the impact of caregiving on the health and psychological well-being of family carers. In this study, interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) was used to explore the subjective experience, needs and appraisals from the perspectives of family carers of older adults. Six family carers were recruited from a carer support group; one male and five female primary carers to an elderly family member with age or disease-related impairment.

In 2009 a project brief was drawn up for a preliminary analysis relating to the current knowledge about and provision for people with dementia in Wales1 . The brief was to undertake some initial fact finding from people with dementia, their carers, some expert professionals and from desk top research to inform a possible wider review of dementia services at a future date.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the determinants of unpaid time in caring activities, with a special emphasis on the gender dimension. Data from the Household Panel Survey for Spain is used to estimate an ordered probit model for the hours interval in care of children and adult people in need of care. The results show that gender is one of the key determinants of the distribution of time in caring. Being in paid employment is also an important factor in the time devoted to caring.

This study examined similarities and differences between active caregivers (adult children and spouses whose family member had Alzheimer's disease) and not-as-yet caregiving adults (adult children and spouses whose family members are older, but do not as yet suffer from Alzheimer's disease). The objective was to determine what factors predict depressed mood and caregiver burden. Findings indicated that there were both differences and similarities between active caregivers and not-as-yet caregivers.

This is a two-part review. Here we present the nature and scale of the challenge our new Government faces if it is to tackle poverty and social exclusion in later life. In publishing this report I would like to thank Sara McKee and the Working Group, as well as Christian Guy, Paul Langlois and James Mumford at the CSJ, for their efforts. The second report, to be published next year, will set out a reform agenda based on this analysis. We are fully aware of the extreme public expenditure pressures that the next years entail, and the review will take these adverse circumstances into account.

Most research into caregiver employment and outcomes conceives of employment as a dichotomous variable—employed or not. This study examines the relationship between work interferences and caregiver burden, well-being, and self-esteem within a modified stress process model. Regression models are employed using a population-based random sample of caregivers. Employment status effects on outcomes for the total sample are estimated, followed by estimations of the effects of work interferences on the same outcomes for the employed subsample.