Netherlands

Chronically ill children require several hours of additional care per day compared to healthy children. As parents provide most of this care, they have to incorporate it into their daily schedule, which implies a reduction in time for other activities. The study aimed to assess the effect of having a chronically ill child on parental employment and parental leisure activity time, and to explore the role of demographic, social, and disease-related variables in relation to employment and leisure activities.

Objective: This study examined the features of informal end-of-life care of older people living in the community and the association between informal care characteristics and dying at home. Methods: Retrospective data were obtained from interviews and self-administered questionnaires of 56 persons who had been primary caregivers of older relatives in the last three months of their lives. Results: Results showed that informal caregivers of terminally ill older people living in the community provided a considerable amount of personal, household, and management care.

Informal caregivers are one of the pillars of home health care. In the Netherlands, the free help they provide to sick or disabled family members, acquaintances or friends exceeds the number of hours of home care provided by professionals. While the government welcomes their contribution, there is concern about the potential burden their work imposes on them. On the one hand, there is concern that informal caregiving could be experienced as a burden and diminish subjective well-being; on the other, helping others as a meaningful activity might increase their subjective well-being.

This study investigates the variations by older people's socio-economic status (SES) (i.e. educational level and social class) in the use of informal and formal help from outside the household in Great Britain, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands. In all these countries, it was older people in low SES groups who mostly used such help.

OBJECTIVE: To identify which caregivers of stroke patients living at home experience the highest levels of strain and are at risk of burn-out, and to investigate how support for caregivers of stroke patients could best be organized, and when this support should be offered.

The healthcare problems of individuals are often solved without the intervention of professionals through family caregiving. Population ageing, a shortage of professionals and cost-control in the healthcare sector1, increase the importance of family caregiving in most west-European countries, where comparative research has shown that national governments no longer take full responsibility for care services.2 The involvement of family caregivers, however, is not without problems.