Health planning

Background and Objectives: Approximately half the care for people with dementia is provided by families. It is therefore imperative that research informs ways of maintaining such care. In this study, we propose that a needs-led approach can provide a useful, novel means of conceptualizing the impact of caring on the lives of family carers. Our aim was to develop and present a needs-led framework for understanding how providing care impacts on carers' fulfilment of needs.

Informal carers save the state's health and social care services billions of pounds each year. The stresses associated with caring have given rise to a number of short-term care services to provide respite to carers. The Carers (Recognition & Services) Act of 1995 identified formally for the first time, the important role that unpaid carers provide across the community in Britain.

Place of death is at times suggested as an outcome for palliative care services. This study aimed to describe longitudinal preferences for place of care and place of death over time for patients and their caregivers. Longitudinal paired data of patient/caregiver dyads from a prospective unblinded cluster randomised control trial were used. Patients and caregivers were separately asked by the palliative care nurse their preference at that time for place of care and place of death.