Health care assistants

There are around 6 million ‘informal carers’ in the UK. This series of 5 articles sets out to explain what informal caring is and how healthcare assistants and nurses can work with and meet the needs of a variety of informal carers in a variety of clinical and healthcare settings and environments. This short series will commence with a brief definition of what informal caring is, placing this short definition within a demographic framework.

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.

This article suggests that the literature on care, which originally was heavily influenced by a gendered perspective, has now taken on other important variables. However, it is argued that if we look at the particular impact of the marketisation and privatisation of long-term care, we can see that gender is still a useful perspective on the production of care, especially paid care.

3rd in a series of 5 articles on informal carers in the UK, focusing on carers who may be more isolated.