Informal care

The recent rise in suicide among Bhutanese refugees has been linked to the erosion of social networks and community supports in the ongoing resettlement process. This paper presents ethnographic findings on the role of informal care practiced by relatives, friends, and neighbors in the prevention and alleviation of mental distress in two Bhutanese refugee communities: the refugee camps of eastern Nepal and the resettled community of Burlington, Vermont, US.

The international long-term care (LTC) debate has recently been focusing on how to strengthen home care provision. In this regard, a major role has been played by informal care and how to best integrate it in a holistic care approach. Italy and Spain, usually labeled as “familialist” or “family-based” care models, have been promoting national reforms or actions to support the integration of “informal” actors into the overall LTC system.

Background: Economic evaluation of palliative care has been slow to develop and the evidence base remains small. Aim: This article estimates formal and informal care costs in the last year of life for a sample of patients who received specialist palliative care in three different areas in Ireland. Design: Formal care costs are calculated for community, specialist palliative care, acute hospital and other services. Where possible, a bottom-up approach is used, multiplying service utilisation by unit cost.

On average informal caregiving substitutes for home help and nurse visits.•A complementary relationship between informal care and outpatient visits is identified.•The findings vary significantly between different geographical European countries. Background In order to contain public health care spending, European countries attempt to promote informal caregiving. However, such a cost reducing strategy will only be successful if informal caregiving is a substitute for formal health care services.

Background The purpose of this paper is to analyse the utilization of formal and informal home care among older patients with cancer (OCP) and to compare this with middle-aged patients with cancer (MCP) and older patients without cancer (ONC). Additionally, we examined predictors of transitions towards formal care one year after a cancer diagnosis. Methods OCP and MCP had to be recruited within three months after a cancer diagnosis and have an estimated life expectancy over six months.

Objectives: This study will explore how help is constructed during and following radiotherapy for patients with cancer.

Methods: Grounded theory methods were used in the study to explore the way in which family members and friends constructed a role for themselves in relation to patients receiving radiotherapy. A total of 22 helpers were interviewed. Patients were being treated for a range of cancers including breast, prostate, colorectal, and head and neck.

Aims and objectives: To explore parents’ involvement in the informal and professional care of their young adult child with mental illness. A further aim was to examine concepts in the caring theory of ‘Involvement in the light–Involvement in the dark’ in the context of mental health care.

AIMS: To explore the associations between social determinants, caregiver's network support, burden of care and their consequences in health and living conditions of informal caregivers.

BACKGROUND: The socio-demographic trends regarding population ageing and changes in family models trigger an increased demand for care.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional study based on the 2008 edition of the National Disability, Independence and Dependency Situations Survey (DIDSS-2008) conducted by the National Statistics Institute in Spain.

This scoping review focuses on the views of informal caregivers regarding the division of care responsibilities between citizens, governments and professionals and the question of to what extent professionals take these views into account during collaboration with them. In Europe, the normative discourse on informal care has changed. Retreating governments and decreasing residential care increase the need to enhance the collaboration between informal caregivers and professionals.

Objective: Examining the causal relationship between employment and informal caring to date has been impeded in countries like Ireland where there is a lack of suitable panel data and/or variables for instrument construction. This paper employs propensity score matching to control for non-random selection into treatment and control groups which controls for differences in employment outcomes between carers and non-carers in Ireland using data from Quarterly National Household Survey 2009 Quarter 3.