Informal care

As the number of older persons in need of long-term care increases, efforts to support older persons remaining in their home are intensified in most OECD countries. In this context of ageing in place, there is a movement towards allowing more individual choice for older persons receiving publicly funded long-term care at home. Having more flexibility in terms of how to receive care can increase the older person’s self-determination and that of his/her informal care givers.

This study aims to investigate whether selected social and psychological characteristics of family caregivers of persons with dementia are related to community-based service use in Belgium. Two aspects were distinguished in service utilisation: volume (number of contacts) and diversity (number of services). Within a selected region, dementia caregivers were traced via the detection of persons with dementia known to community health or social services. A probability diagnosis was made with the Geriatric Mental State and the computer algorithm AGECAT.

Participation in activity is essential for the psychological well-being of people with dementia. The potential benefits of home-based activity programmes may depend on family carers, but little is known about their experience. This study aimed to elicit carers' experiences of involving the person with dementia in activity. Thirty in-depth interviews (i.e. initial and follow-up) were carried out with 15 co-resident carers of people with dementia who were recruited through local community mental health teams. Data were analysed using a grounded theory method.

The experiences of young adult carers (YACs) have been vastly under-researched, particularly within Australian caregiving literature. This article explores the existence, extent and nature of informal young adult caregiving in Australia, defining YACs as individuals aged between 18 and 25 years who provide unpaid care or support to family members living with chronic illness or disability.

Population ageing and constraints on public sector spending for older people with long-term health problems have led policy makers to turn to the social networks of older people, or the ‘informal sector’, as a source of long-term care. An important question arising from this policy shift is whether these social networks have the resources to sustain the high levels of care that can be required by older people with chronic health problems.

Drawing on recent quantitative and qualitative research, we consider lessons of the Scottish policy of free personal care for older people. The policy is embedded in political debates about devolution and interacts with various changing policies on care and support for older people. Evaluation is complicated by these interactions and by gaps in relevant data, especially concerning costs. Operationally, policy implementation has presented varying difficulties for local authorities.

Few researchers have explored family carers’ perspectives of smoking by their family members with mental illness, despite smoking rates remaining high for people with mental illness. In-depth qualitative interviews with twelve South Australian family carers explored their experiences and views of providing care for people with mental illness who smoke. Data were analysed thematically. Around the central theme of the caring role within the context of mental illness and smoking, were three interrelated themes: (1) responsibility; (2) accommodation; and, (3) dissonance.

The discourse surrounding community care characterises informal support being superior to and preferred over formal sources of support, with this distinction buttressed by policy changes. There is a lack of understanding of the interdependence of both spheres of support. This article argues that an individual's experience and expectation of one type of support is often made in relation to his or her understanding, expectation and experience of other sources of support.

I argue that it is appropriate for adult recipients of personal care to feel and express gratitude whenever care providers are inspired partly by benevolence, and deliver a real benefit in a manner that conveys respect for the recipient. My focus on gratitude is consistent with important aspects of feminist ethics of care, including its attention to the particularities and vulnerabilities of caregivers and care recipients, and its concern with how relations of care are shaped by social hierarchies and public institutions.