caregiving

The purpose of our research was to investigate male caregiving via a status of being hidden and forgotten in East-Central Europe, where caregiving itself had only lately been emancipated, and only as provided by women. In Poland and in other European countries the gender bias is clear: men provide less care than women, the care is less intensive and of a different character. By desk research, own research interpretation and literature review, the paper addressed informal, family caregiving towards frail older adults performed by men.

Background  The growing global epidemic of HIV/AIDS has a significant impact on the lives of both people living with HIV/AIDS and their family members including children. Children of parents with HIV/AIDS may experience an increased responsibility of caregiving in family. However, limited data are available regarding the caregiving experience and its impact on psychosocial well-being among these children. This study was designed to address these issues by using qualitative data collected from children affected by HIV/AIDS in China.

The purpose of this study was to develop an empirically derived multi-item scale of care tasks performed by young people in the context of family illness/disability: the Youth Activities of Caregiving Scale (YACS). A total of 135 youngsters aged 10–24 years with an ill/disabled family member completed questionnaires. Factor analyses performed on the YACS yielded four factors, instrumental care, social/emotional care, personal/intimate care and domestic/household care, accounting for 57.78% of the variance. The internal reliabilities of all factors ranged from 0.74 to 0.92.

Increasing longevity and the growing proportion of the aged in the population in most countries have served to focus on the question of how governments and older people can finance living, health, and care options in retirement. Prudent management of income and assets is an increasingly complex and important aspect of aging as assets and expectations of self-financing increase. Although many informal caregivers act as asset managers and/or substitute decision-makers for older people, little attention has been paid to this increasingly important aspect of care.

Objectives To compare the prevalence and predictors of caregiver esteem and burden during two different stages of care recipients' illnesses-advanced chronic illness and the last year of life. Design Longitudinal, observational cohort study.

Informal care provides the often hidden foundations of policies promoting care in the community and Ageing in Place. This paper examines the current impasse concerning those who are employed and seek to provide care, canvassing current and future possibilities for finding a way through the existing conflict between sustaining employment and providing informal care in the home. Focusing on the issues that emerge regarding support of older (aged) care recipients, the paper first considers the demographic, economic and democratic and governmental policy causes of the current problems.

In the United Kingdom, informal carers look after relatives or friends who need extra support because of age, physical or learning disability, or illness. The burden of informal care work falls on women, who often care for longer hours and durations than men. This paper considers the impact that caring responsibilities have on women's employment. The research is based on a dedicated questionnaire and in-depth interviews with informal caregivers.

This article reports on the results of a qualitative study (in-depth interviews) carried out in the United Kingdom as part of a larger (two-phased) study investigating the experiences, health and future perspectives of older parent carers (six mothers and two fathers) of offspring with learning disabilities over a prolonged period of time.

We investigate the extent to which people's earlier circumstances and experiences shape subsequent life-courses. We do this using UK longitudinal data to provide a dynamic analysis of employment and caregiving histories for 4339 people over 15–20 years between 1991 and 2010. We analyse these histories as sequences using optimal matching and cluster analysis to identify five distinct employment-caregiving pathways. Regression analysis shows that prior to embarking on these pathways, people are already differentiated by life-stage, gender and attitudes towards family and gender roles.

The study examined the effect of adult children’s disability on parents’ physical health in later life and the extent to which parents’ symptoms of alcoholism in mid-life moderates the link between children’s disability and later life parental health. Analyses are based on data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. The analytic sample included parents of children with developmental disabilities (n = 145) or mental health problems (n = 200) and 2,432 parents of unaffected children.