Adolescence

These photographs are just some of nearly 300 taken by young carers to describe their lives. Jo Aldridge and Darren Sharpe report.

No abstract is available for this article.

Objective: Research into youth caregiving in families where a parent experiences a significant medical condition has been hampered by a lack of contextually sensitive measures of the nature and breadth of young caregiving experiences. This study examined the factor structure and measurement invariance of such a measure called the Young Carer of Parents Inventory (YCOPI; Pakenham et al., 2006) using confirmatory factor analysis across 3 groups of youth.

Young carers may be more damaged by what we do to try to protect them.

The study's rationale: Most people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) choose to live at home without known consequences for their children.

Aims and objectives: To study the personal experience of being a young caregiver of a chronically ill parent diagnosed with MS.

Methodological design and justification: Phenomenology was the methodological approach of the study since it gives an inside information of the lived experience.

Caring for a chronically ill relative takes a physical and mental toll on young carers, suggests a study in Austria.

Informal caregivers are one of the pillars of home health care. In the Netherlands, the free help they provide to sick or disabled family members, acquaintances or friends exceeds the number of hours of home care provided by professionals. While the government welcomes their contribution, there is concern about the potential burden their work imposes on them. On the one hand, there is concern that informal caregiving could be experienced as a burden and diminish subjective well-being; on the other, helping others as a meaningful activity might increase their subjective well-being.

There are about 32,000 young carers in the UK. Rebecca Coombes hears how a school nurse is helping one of them to cope.

Despite recurring concerns about the role and appropriate support of informal carers, little is known about the parental experience of caring for children with learning disabilities in Ireland. This study describes and analyses the nature and consequences of care and coping among parents of children (<16) with learning disabilities living in the Greater Dublin area.