Scopus

Whilst the involvement of service users and carers in social work student assessments has significantly changed the education of social work students in the United Kingdom (UK), it is a practice that has not been adopted internationally. The chapter makes the case for service user and carer involvement in students’ assessments at international level. It discusses the policy and the legal context for service user and carer involvement in students’ assessments, and what service users and carers look for when assessing students.

In Canada, a growing number of young people (i.e., young carers) provide an increasing level of unpaid care to family member(s) with a chronic illness, disability, mental health or substance use issue and/or problems related to old age. Despite young carers occupying a central role in public policy and social service programming in other countries, very little attention has been paid to these youth in Canada, with no dedicated policies acknowledging their care-work and only a handful of non-profit organisations struggling to support their needs.

This paper explores the effectiveness of paid services in supporting unpaid carers’ employment in England. There is currently a new emphasis in England on ‘replacement care’, or paid services for the cared-for person, as a means of supporting working carers. The international evidence on the effectiveness of paid services as a means of supporting carers’ employment is inconclusive and does not relate specifically to England. The study reported here explores this issue using the 2009/10 Personal Social Services Survey of Adult Carers in England.

Background: Families express a need for guidance in helping their loved ones with anorexia nervosa (AN). Guided self-help interventions can offer support to caregivers.

Recent shifts toward individual choice and consumer-directed practices largely conflict with traditional expectations of familial obligation and informal caregiving. The research reported on in this paper aimed to understand how practitioners’ perspectives of spousal caregiving obligations impact on choice in rural communities. Seven focus groups were conducted in rural and outer regional areas of North East Victoria, comprising 42 practitioners who work with older couples who reside in the community.

Improving responsiveness to the needs of older people from minority ethnic communities has been emphasised as a goal in England since the publication of the National Service Framework for Older People in 2001. Despite this, people from minority ethnic groups consistently give poorer ratings of their health services than ‘majority’ populations, both in England and across many other health-care systems. Language barriers have been shown to play a particularly important role, and appear to be a stronger predictor of perceived quality of care than ethnic origin per se.