Social services

The author emphasizes the need for cooperation between disabled people's organisations and carers' groups to push for more social care in Great Britain. According to the author, the debate about carers is enjoying its highest political profile in years but the voice of disabled people is seldom heard in it. She contends that the growing number of informal carers is evidence of what happens when an expansion in the numbers requiring support meets fast-retreating public services. She points out that it is hard to believe that politicians listen to carers.

Reviews three Web sites on social work. Features of the Web site of the Young Carers Research Group; Design of the Web site bubblycrew.org; Topics covered by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers site.

The article focuses on the important role played by carers in the society in Great Britain. Carers allow the people that they look after to stay in the community making it vital for them to be supported continuously. The Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act of 2004 was introduced to ensure that carers are determined, educated about their rights and informed that public agencies support their initiatives. It stresses the need to develop carers' lack of self-confidence and self-esteem to avoid disadvantages in other endeavors.

This article explores the experiences of family carers of older people in using support services in six European countries: Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK. Following a common protocol, data were collected from national samples of approximately 1,000 family carers per country and clustered into comparable subgroups to facilitate cross-national analysis. Carers' use of available support services is limited across Europe but is considerably higher in Germany, Sweden, and the UK than in Poland, Greece, and Italy.

Direct payments can now be made to older people. But a 12-month research project has revealed that service users, carers and junior staff still have little knowledge of them. The authors of the Shield research team, Anglia Polytechnic University, and Tower Hamlets Coalition of Disabled People explain that service users are cautiously optimistic about what direct payments offer them but are anxious about the practicalities.

In early 1999 the government announced money was to be spent on giving carers respite breaks. Reports on how the money, despite coming through to local authorities, has not reached the carers themselves.

Reports on the development of a joint mental health strategy for older people in a central London Borough. The project brought together clinicians and practitioners from a variety of settings, the voluntary sector, and users and carers. The aim of the project was to develop a shared philosophy of care based on promoting independence and from this to identify the components of a spectrum of care that would meet the wide range of needs of elders with mental ill health. The borough had high levels of deprivation, unemployment and poor housing.

Looks at how health professionals, social services and the voluntary sector are all working together to support people with dementia and their carers at the Petersfield Centre in Harold Hill in north-east London.

This paper analyses data from a 3-year prospective study to understand the factors associated with becoming a caregiver to a person with a chronic illness and examines the dynamics among caregivers over time. A total of 1485 participants were drawn from a study conducted in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya. Two waves of data collected in 2006 for the baseline and a follow-up in 2009 were used. Information on the demographic, self-reported health and socioeconomic characteristics such as education, sources of livelihood and employment status was used.