Social activities

Background: Families often prefer home care to hospital care, and home‐care services for ill children are increasing worldwide with limited knowledge of families’ needs during curative and palliative home care. The aim of this study was to elucidate family members’ lived experience when a sick child received home care from county‐based primary healthcare services.

Background: Support services for people with dementia are variable depending on the area or town they live. People with dementia and family carers can often get very little support after a diagnosis. Services might not be suitable or they may not be aware of the service in the first place. Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate a socially prescribed community service provided to people with dementia and family carers offering physical and mental activities.

Liveability is a NHS nurse-led service providing instructor-led exercise classes and gym sessions in Liverpool. The service collaborated with a European research project Innovate Dementia to increased access to Liveability for people living with dementia and to evaluate the benefits for those taking part in the programme. The evaluation found that involvement in the exercise programme brought many benefits for individuals with dementia and their carers. Core themes are discussed in relation to enjoyment and recreation and improved fitness and cognition.

Throughout the 20th century women were more vulnerable to poverty than men which continues into the 21st century. These gender differences are explored in a chapter on gender, poverty and social exclusion in a volume giving the results of the millennium Poverty and Social Exclusion (PSE) Survey. Social exclusion exists where one or more of the social sub-systems is not functioning adequately - the economic, social and family and community systems.