Social care online

As part of an evaluation of service users’ and carers’ experience of involvement in mental health education, training and research, an extended literature review was undertaken. The purpose of this was to review policy underpinning service user and carer involvement in those areas, identify the extent and range of involvement, the processes involved, and the extent to which the effectiveness and impact of involvement had been evaluated. The review found that there was a range of different ways in which people were involved.

The Law Commissioner has recommended changes to carers rights in its proposals to overhaul adult care law. The changes could help social workers to highlight the needs of hidden carers.

Aim: To document the behavioural and psychological symptoms in patients with a diagnosis of established Alzheimer's disease (AD) for at least 3 years.

This report discusses the characteristics and experiences of unpaid carers and those in receipt of unpaid care in Scotland, by analysing the Scottish Household Survey from 1999 to 2004. The aim of the report is to provide a clear picture of unpaid carers and identify those groups of carers who are in particular need of support in order to inform the development of Scottish Executive policy on carers.

Policy guidelines insist that people with dementia should be involved in decisions about key life choices and transitions. However, as dementia affects both cognitive and communication difficulties, it becomes increasingly difficult to do this, and innovative and effective ways to support people with dementia and their carers to interact with each other are needed. This project, funded by Joseph Rowntree Foundation, examined if Talking Mats, a low-tech communication framework, could support family carers and people with dementia to discuss issues around daily living with each other.

Summarises the Government's progress in supporting carers since the publication of Recognised, valued and supported: next steps for the Carers Strategy' in 2010. It provides an overview of evidence gathered over the last few years and explains the main achievements in recognising and supporting carers during that time.

This article describes the themes emerging from the author’s anthology of personal accounts of caring for a family member or friend with dementia, ‘Telling tales about dementia’. It explains the importance of family carers and suggests that the knowledge of family carers should be actively sought by professionals delivering services, discussing the barriers of patient confidentiality, examples of important information from family carers being disregarded, and the role of family carers in monitoring care and challenging professionals when necessary.

Researchers and practitioners in several Western countries have recently developed tools for assessing the situation of the carers of adults who are ill, elderly or have disabilities. The present article describes the impact of three such assessment tools, from Canada, the UK and Sweden, on the professional practice of assessors. All tools were tested in agency-based studies. Focus groups, workshops and interviews with assessors were employed to understand the impact on professionals and their practice.

Diagnosis plays a significant role in the shaping of individual identities and the quality of life for people with learning difficulties and their family carers. Diagnostic labels are constitutive of peoples' lives, in that they bring forth pathology, create problemsaturated stories and construct careers as patients and cases. Disabled identities of people with learning difficulties remain largely ‘embodied’ and within the definitional control of professionals.