Communication

Most older people living in 24-hour care settings have dementia. We employed qualitative interviews to explore positive and negative aspects of the experience of family carers, staff and people with dementia living in 10 homes in London and West Essex, selected to cover the full range of 24-hour long-term care settings. The interview used open semi-structured questions.

This chapter reviews a community based action research project undertaken within the Older People's Directorate of Shropshire's Mental Health NHS Trust. The project investigated how statutory bodies might best facilitate the involvement of carers. The work focused on carers of mentally infirm older people and the carers of dementia sufferers. The research sought to explore, and find solutions to, known barriers to participation such as poor communication routes, paternalistic organisation cultures and a non-homogenous user group. It was conducted in three phases.

This resource looks at the benefits that are gained from the relationships that are built within social work. Using the voices of service users, carers and workers you will hear accounts of how the relationships that were created helped them to deal with the difficulties they faced.

This paper reports on a survey of carer satisfaction with telephone consultations with doctors in a community service for people with intellectual disability (also known as learning disability in the UK health services). A 10-item anonymized carer satisfaction questionnaire was sent out following telephone consultations over a 4 week period with questions about suitability, effectiveness, efficiency and appropriateness of telephone consultations. Out of 13 questionnaires sent, 11 were returned. There was a high level of satisfaction with accessibility, effectiveness and suitability.

This video looks at the practical arrangements that need to be made around accessibility, support and payments to ensure that users and carers can participate in social work education and be rewarded for their input. The film will be useful for social work students, lecturers, tutors, social worker educators, people working more broadly in co-production/participation and service users and carers.

The material on this DVD reflects the views of a multi-ethnic group of carers and community members in Wolverhampton who meet regularly to share their experiences and hope for the future. Some issues for discussion are also suggested in the accompanying leaflet, including access to appropriate services, improving communication and better recognition of the role of carers.

During interviews and conversations in health care environments, respondents often convey information in a humorous fashion, self-disclosure something very personal, or  tell detailed stories containing emotional content that is difficult to decipher and interpret. This article offers suggestions for achieving more productive and satisfying interviews with family caregivers who rely on humour to help them tell their stories.

This article develops an approach towards dementia care that highlights the nature of dementia care triads comprising the person with dementia, their informal carer, and the health and social professional. In particular, the article highlights various social practices that are shown, from our practice, to contribute towards the inclusion or exclusion of particular triad members. The article reviews existing work on triadic interaction, particularly in relationship to dementia care. Various communication processes are identified and illustrated using examples taken from casework.