carers

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a condition that causes individuals considerable distress. It also presents a significant challenge to the health service and is often viewed by clinicians as frustrating to manage. The purpose of the present paper is to explore the experiences of individuals in the immediate social sphere of those suffering from CLBP and their role in care-giving for their partner. An approach was taken using two qualitative research methods to gather data: journals and focus groups.

Since the community care reforms of the early 1990s, practical support for informal carers has become one of the key building blocks of community care policy in England and Wales. In 2004, Linda Pickard wrote a report for the Audit Commission called The Effectiveness and Cost-effectiveness of Support and Services for Informal Carers of Older People. This summary highlights the key points.

The general knowledge of family caregivers’ experience of burden during the continuing care of a close relative with dementia is incomplete. Several types of care settings are available today, and, for carers, modalities of burden probably differ between these settings. The aim of this study was to explore whether burden differed significantly between former family caregivers (FFCs) to people with dementia who were in group living care (GLC), a small home-like unit for six to eight people, compared with people with dementia in nursing homes (NH).

BACKGROUND: Although the elevated occurrence of epilepsy in people with intellectual disabilities (ID) is well recognized, the nature of seizures and their association with psychopathology and carer strain are less clearly understood. The aims were to determine the prevalence and features of epilepsy in a community-based population of adults with ID, and to explore whether the presence of epilepsy was associated with greater psychopathology or carer strain.

Reports on the development of a joint mental health strategy for older people in a central London Borough. The project brought together clinicians and practitioners from a variety of settings, the voluntary sector, and users and carers. The aim of the project was to develop a shared philosophy of care based on promoting independence and from this to identify the components of a spectrum of care that would meet the wide range of needs of elders with mental ill health. The borough had high levels of deprivation, unemployment and poor housing.

The contribution made by informal carers to the provision of care in the community in the UK is formally acknowledged in the 1995 Carers (Recognition and Services) Act. This legislation has focussed attention, once again, on the relationship between formal services and those providing informal care. The Act has re-created a lack of clarity about the position carers hold in the carer dyad. Findings are presented here from an exploratory study about the experience of dementia.

Do male and female carers have different approaches to the caring role? Tina Fear presents the results of her two small qualitative studies.

Place of death is at times suggested as an outcome for palliative care services. This study aimed to describe longitudinal preferences for place of care and place of death over time for patients and their caregivers. Longitudinal paired data of patient/caregiver dyads from a prospective unblinded cluster randomised control trial were used. Patients and caregivers were separately asked by the palliative care nurse their preference at that time for place of care and place of death.

Six recorded stories giving first-hand personal accounts of carers of people experiencing dementia or those nearing the end of their lives. Each story can be used to highlight and support areas of learning covered by the Care Council's Knowledge Sets for dementia and end of life care.

Undertaking a literature review revealed that when evaluating the effectiveness of the drug treatments for dementia few studies purposefully explore the views of users and carers. Their views are mainly derived from secondary analysis of conventional scientific evidence. Where the views of users and carers were explored it was discovered that they evaluate the effectiveness of the drug treatments in terms of quality of life.