carers

Studies have highlighted successful outcomes of psychological therapies for people with intellectual disabilities. However, processes underlying these outcomes are uncertain. Thematic analysis was used to explore the perceptions of three clinical psychologists, six clients and six carers of barriers and facilitators to therapeutic change for people with intellectual disabilities.

Objective: To write a narrative review of the role of primary care physicians in the long-term care of people with dementia living at home, with a focus on psychosocial interventions, the provision of information and carer support, behavioural and psychological symptoms and case management.

Methods: The systematic review carried out for the NICE/SCIE Guidelines was updated from January 2006, Cochrane Reviews were identified and other publications found by consultations with experts.

The safe self management of medicines will be affected by the presence of dementia. A qualitative study using grounded theory was undertaken by a community nursing organisation in Melbourne, Australia, in order to develop a strength-based and person-centred approach to the assessment of medication ability. The perspectives of the person with dementia and their carers were explored to see if there were any significant differences in their medication management experiences when compared to those of older adults without dementia and their carers.

Drawing on recent guidelines and research this clinical review presents recent knowledge and practice on assessing and helping older carers. The review has sections on: how carers should be identified; how a carer assessment should be undertaken; useful interventions to support carers; and the major challenges facing clinicians regarding assessment. Short case scenarios are used to illustrate the issues.

This article describes the development of a new service for people with dementia and their carers in a large post-industrial city in the north of England, UK. The service arose in response to the perceived inadequacies of existing respite care provision and has proved very successful in meeting the needs of people with dementia and their family carers, and in providing high levels of job satisfaction for staff. The success of the initiative can be understood using the Senses Framework and relationship-centred care as an analytic lens to identify key attributes of the service.

The present study describes and compares quality of life (QoL) and factors which predict QoL among people aged 75 years and over who receive help with activities of daily living (ADLs) from formal and/or informal helpers. The subjects were living at home or in special accommodation in Sweden. A postal questionnaire was sent to a randomly selected and age-stratified sample of 8500 people. The response rate was 52.8% (n = 4337), and 1247 people [mean age (± SD) = 86.4 ± 5.9 years] received help and indicated who helped them with ADLs.

In February 2009 the government set out its plan to meet one of the biggest challenges facing England's health and social care system - dementia. The national dementia strategy is one year old but a key study has found progress is slow. Vern Pitt visited Croydon – which has long been held up as a leader in dementia care – to ask professionals and carers about how the strategy’s objectives and the challenges posed by the condition are being tackled.

The presence of an informal carer is often a prerequisite for successful palliative home care, and the staff's ability to support informal carers' coping in such situations is important. Recent research has revealed that it is possible to achieve positive psychological states in palliative care despite the burdening situation.

This article considers the coping strategies of families with children and adults with intellectual disabilities. It is argued that the literature on coping and resilience in families has often been overlooked in favour of deficit models of family functioning. The study was designed to provide a further test of the transactional model of coping, but more especially, to explore which problem-solving, cognitive and stress reduction coping strategies family members found useful.

This article examines three policy statements on informal carers published in the UK in 1999—the National Strategy for Carers, the report of the Royal Commission on Long Term Care and the note of dissent by two members of the Royal Commission. These three documents contain two rather different approaches to policy for carers. On the one hand, the National Strategy and note of dissent emphasize respite care or short-term breaks for carers, and are concerned with sustaining the well-being of carers as well as ensuring the continuation of caring itself.