carers

Aims: The worldwide phenomenon of an ageing population has considerable consequences for health and health care; leading to greater demand for long-term care and support from families for older relatives. In the UK this, together with the preference for dependent older people to be cared for in the community, has led to the growth of intermediate care services (ICS) that bridge hospital and home offering rehabilitation and care. However, there has been limited in-depth exploration of carer perspectives of these services.

Beccy Sims reports on the government's efforts to provide better help and support for the country's 5.2 million carers.

New government strategy to support informal carers, especially carers of older people. The principles of the strategy and the number of people providing informal care are discussed.

This paper reports on a qualitative study analyzing service-user (SU) and carer perspectives on medication compliance and their experience of compulsory treatment. Eleven SUs and eight carers were interviewed. The research is set against the background of changes to mental health legislation in England, in the form of Supervised Community Treatment. This signals a change in community mental health practice and urges a reconsideration of concepts such as compliance, concordance and coercion.

Family support groups (FSG) are an important source of intervention for caregivers of an older, frailer, or ill family member. Whether and how FSG works within ethnic minority groups is not well understood, however. Drawing on data from a sub-set of a larger qualitative study focused on exploring the impact of participating in a family support group, this study examined how culture influenced the FSG experience of Chinese family caregivers. In-depth, personal interviews were conducted with six Chinese family caregivers about their experiences participating in a family support group.

Background: The inverse care law proposing that medical services are distributed inversely to population health needs, and that this law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, was first suggested by Tudor Hart in 1971. This paper considers whether an inverse care law can be observed for the provision of informal care as well as for medical care.

Aim: Using data from the 2001 census we sought to investigate the contemporary relevance of the inverse care law.

Purpose/Objectives: To describe the dynamics of commitment, expectations, and negotiation from the perspective of caregivers of patients undergoing blood and marrow transplantation (BMT).

Research Approach: Descriptive, exploratory, qualitative methodology. Setting: Comprehensive cancer center in a major southern U.S. city. Participants: 40 caregivers of patients undergoing BMT.

The study examined the effects of transition employment support to two cohorts of young people who were in their last year in school or college in 2005/2006 and 2006/2007. This paper reports the views of carers, teachers and support workers of the impact this additional support made to the young people. Analysis of the data reveals a difference between the views of carers and those of professionals.

The author looks at three areas of the Care and Support Bill: the rights of carers, rights to funded advocacy and eligibility. Under the Bill carers will have rights to funding for services for the first time and there will be funding for independent advocates for those who will struggle to navigate the social care system alone. However, as the author explains, eligibility criteria may mean that people with moderate needs will fall outside the system.

Study design: Cross sectional survey. Objective: To examine the nature and prevalence of common mental disorders among informal carers of people with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) and the association with their leisure satisfaction. Setting: Christian Medical College, Vellore, Tamilnadu, India.

Objective: To identify carer and patient characteristics associated with various aspects of burden of care.

Method: The burden on 196 carers, each caring for one patient with dementia, was rated by means of the Relative Stress Scale (RSS). Patients were assessed with the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Disability Assessment for Dementia (DAD) and the Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI).