rehabilitation

Home-care re-ablement is a short-term, intensive service that helps people to (re-) establish their capacity and confidence in performing basic personal care and domestic tasks at home, thereby reducing needs for longer term help. Home-care re-ablement is an increasingly common feature of English adult social care services; there are similar service developments in Australia and New Zealand. This paper presents evidence from semi-structured interviews conducted in early 2010 with 34 service users and 10 carers from five established re-ablement services in England.

Objective: To examine the unmet needs of informal carers of community dwelling disabled people and to compare their perspectives to those of disabled people and nominated professionals. It was hypothesised that a poor recognition of carers’ needs could have implications for carers’ well- being and thus their ability to maintain their caring role. Need was defined as a service or a resource that would confer a health or rehabilitation gain.

In 1999, the Stroke Association set up a project to promote home-based occupational therapy for patients who had had a stroke and been discharged home from hospital. As part of the service evaluation, focus groups for service users and carers were set up in two of the sites to consult users about the changes in their quality of life during the period of the home therapy. A total of 11 service users and 9 carers attended the groups, representing 30% of the service users and 27% of the carers involved in the project.

Background and Purpose— Early supported discharge (ESD) for stroke has been shown to yield outcomes similar to or better than those of conventional care, but there is less information on the impact on costs and on the caregiver. The purpose of this study is to estimate the costs associated with an ESD program compared with those of usual care.

Methods— We conducted a randomized controlled trial of stroke patients who required rehabilitation services and who had a caregiver at home.

PURPOSE: Many disabled stroke survivors live at home supported by informal caregivers. Research has revealed that these caregivers are experiencing strain. This study aims to examine the prevalence and differences over time of caregivers' strain in the first 6 months post-stroke and to predict caregiver strain based on patients' and caregivers' characteristics and service input.

Aims: The worldwide phenomenon of an ageing population has considerable consequences for health and health care; leading to greater demand for long-term care and support from families for older relatives. In the UK this, together with the preference for dependent older people to be cared for in the community, has led to the growth of intermediate care services (ICS) that bridge hospital and home offering rehabilitation and care. However, there has been limited in-depth exploration of carer perspectives of these services.

For this special issue, the latest research findings on the topic of families living with parental psychiatric disabilities were solicited and compiled, to inform policymakers and practitioners with the best research available, while informing researchers about new developments in the field.

Purpose. To explore: (a) the type and frequency of care-giving activities provided by family members in the Rehabilitation Setting (RS), (b) opportunities for family members to receive training in care-giving activities, (c) to what extent caregivers feel free to ask the nursing staff for help and (d) to estimate the number of nursing staff required to substitute this care and thus to estimate the money saved by the RS due to the in-hospital informal care.

Objectives: To evaluate the effectiveness of an education programme for patients and carers recovering from stroke. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Subjects and setting: One hundred and seventy patients admitted to a stroke rehabilitation unit and 97 carers of these patients. Interventions: The intervention group received a specifically designed stroke information manual and were invited to attend education meetings every two weeks with members of their multidisciplinary team.