Service provision

The needs of young carers and their families are a multi-agency responsibility that crosses both adults’ and children and families’ services. This practice guide is therefore aimed at all agencies that have contact with young carers and the people for whom they care. It brings together much of the thinking and experience behind the good practice developed so far and will provide a useful starting point for those new to this area of work and serve as a development resource for the more experienced.

Family carers provide more care than the combined efforts of the NHS and social services departments, and their value to the economy is estimated to be around £34 billion a year (Hirst, 1999). However, many carers have health problems of their own.

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.

Caring in Later Life is a review of the needs and roles of older carers (Milne et al, 2001). It brings together a wide‐ranging review of academic and policy literature with an original meta‐analysis of the 1995 General Household Survey (OPCS, 1995). This paper focuses on the findings of the GHS analysis. The picture of older carers that emerges is significantly different from that of carers overall.It is clear that older carers constitute a large and growing number of the carers and represent an increasingly large proportion of the total number of UK carers.

Successive government policies have highlighted the need to inform and involve carers fully in the hospital discharge process. However, some research suggests that many carers feel insufficiently involved and unsupported in this process.

Objective: The objective of this study is to test the validity of an accreditation programme for memory services in the UK by investigating whether different levels of accreditation status (excellent compared with accredited) are reflected in patients' and carers' reported satisfaction. Method: A comparison of survey data from patient and carer feedback questionnaires collected from services as part of the accreditation process. Results: Five hundred and eighty-three patient questionnaires and 663 carer questionnaires were returned from 41 services.

This paper reports on a study in two NHS mental health trusts in England in 2008-2009. Data were collected from staff, service users and carers to inform service and workforce developments. The findings were reported relate to service users and carers and concur with staff views. They relate to modernisation of services, the challenges of a multiplicity of stakeholders and organisations, as well as the need to involve users and carers in developments.

The Scottish Executive commissioned this literature review. The overall aim was to provide a comprehensive summary of existing knowledge of how young carers are identified and how their needs are assessed and met. Therefore the review largely concentrated on the interaction between young carers and their families on the one hand and service agencies on the other. Understanding the needs of young carers was an important context for the review, but was not the primary focus.