Day care

The Kintun program is the first public health strategy specifically designed for dementia care in Chile. It was launched in 2013 in the city of Santiago with support from the National Service for the Elderly and the Municipality of Peñalolén. Using an interdisciplinary team, the program seeks to promote community integration and better support for persons with dementia and their caregivers. The multicomponent program includes: an activity-based day care center, training and education of family caregivers, home visits, and community outreach to increase dementia awareness.

Potential benefits from day care attendance are reported in the literature for both people with dementia and caregivers, although the evidence-base is limited. The study aimed to explore and compare experiences of day care services for people with dementia as described by day care attendees and their caregivers in Norway and Scotland. Whereas day care receives prominence in Norway’s national dementia plan, Scotland does not highlight day care in its national dementia strategy. A qualitative cross-national comparative study was undertaken.

Objective: To explore how people with dementia, their informal caregivers and their professionals participate in decision making about daycare and to develop a typology of participation trajectories.; Design: A qualitative study with a prospective, multiperspective design, based on 244 semistructured interviews, conducted during three interview rounds over the course of a year.

Day care, as a type of care in between residential care and home help, has been available for several years, and is often referred to as an adequate alternative form of care for people with dementia. The goals of Swedish day care are to create a meaningful day for participants, offer family caregivers respite, and provide care for persons with dementia. The aim of this Swedish study was to describe day care clients with dementia problems over a 12-month period, and to discuss what distinguished those who discontinued day care from those who stayed with it.

This second article on family care-givers will focus on how healthcare assistants (HCAs) can support such care-givers within a variety of care settings, including GP practices, healthcare centres, hospital departments, hospital wards and in the care-giver's own home. Suggestions for training of HCAs who are likely to work with family care-givers will be proposed.

Objectives: To explore the experiences of people involved in UK palliative care day services (PCDS) and identify the important outcomes of this service. Methods: Focus groups were carried out separately with patients, informal carers and volunteers from four purposively selected palliative care day units and with day unit managers from 11 units. Results: Patients benefited from both the support of PCDS professionals and social support of fellow PCDS patients, which contributed to a perceived improvement in their quality of life.

Because of the complex nature of the problems that carers of persons with dementia encounter, several comprehensive support programs for carers were developed in the past decade. One such program is the Meeting Centres Support Program (MCSP) that integrates different types of support for persons with dementia and their carers, which have proved to be effective in practice and/or research.

Interest in the concerns of cancer patients’ carers has been growing steadily over the last decade reflected in key cancer service policy documents [DOH, 1995. A Policy Framework for Commissioning Cancer Services (Calman-Hine Report). London, HMSO; DOH, 2002. The NHS Cancer Plan]. Despite this acknowledgement, it can be argued that less is known about carers’ experience in the cancer treatment context. Carers can be defined as someone who shares the experience of cancer with the patient.

Objectives: To explore the impact of two methods of post-hospital stroke rehabilitation on both carers' perceptions of the health services offered and their quality of life.

Setting: East Dorset Health Authority.

Subjects: Forty-six informal carers were recruited from a sample of 106, initially identified from stroke patients participating in a larger randomized controlled trial.

Design: Qualitative methods.