Statistical data

Studies on informal care provision have often focused on the provision of care for persons with a long term physical or mental ill-health or disability, or problems related to old age. However, the provision of care and support more broadly, for example in the form of childcare for grandchildren, can also impact on various aspects of a carer's life, such as their employment (if under the state retirement age), lifetime earnings and, by extension, pension income in later life.

This article reports on the development of an instrument to measure dementia patients' and their families' experiences with care provision. Using the responses of 267 care recipient/caregiver dyads, exploratory factor analysis was used to extract an underlying structure of the dyads' assessments of their experiences with dementia networks of care. The results suggested that from the perspective of the care recipient and caregiver, it is the individuals who they interact with in their care journey that define and shape the evaluation of their experiences.

Objective To identify common difficult decisions made by family carers on behalf of people with dementia, and facilitators of and barriers to such decisions, in order to produce information for family carers about overcoming barriers.

Design Qualitative study to delineate decision areas through focus groups and complexity of decision making in individual interviews.

Setting Community settings in London.

Men and women in Great Britain are increasingly involved in a variety of economic and social roles, particularly during their mid-life period. This article examines the changes in role occupancy across four birth cohorts passing through mid-life over the period 1985-2000. Data from the General Household Survey is used to investigate the occupancy of four key roles: 'partner', 'parent', 'carer' and 'paid worker', analysing separate and multiple role occupancies and level of commitment to a particular role.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the joint effects of bereavement and caregiver intervention on caregiver depressive symptoms. 

This article is focused on children providing and financing long-term care for their elderly parent. The aim of this work is to highlight the interactions that may take place among siblings when deciding whether or not to become a caregiver. We look at families with two children using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe; our sample contains 314 dependent elderly and their 628 adult children. In order to identify the interactions between siblings, we have specified a two-person discrete game model.

The future market costs of long-term care for older people will be affected by the extent of informal care. This paper reports on projections of receipt of informal care by disabled older people from their spouses and (adult) children to 2031 in England. The paper shows that, over the next 30 years, care by spouses is likely to increase substantially. However, if current patterns of care remain the same, care by children will also need to increase by nearly 60 per cent by 2031. It is not clear that the supply of care by children will rise to meet this demand. 

Objective: The objectives of this study were to: (i) obtain baseline data on the extent of carer involvement across a representative sample of hospital and community patients within an integrated area health service; and (ii) examine perspectives on discharge planning and community care among patients and their carers to identify information and resources they consider important.

The French system of social care policy for dependent older people is an allowance known as the Prestation Specifique Dependance (PSD) from January 1997 to December 2001 and subsequently the Allocation Personalisee a l'Automie (APA) from January 2002 for services or to pay a member of the family. The chapter covers demographic factors underlying this policy development with statistical tables, and the two principal stages of French social care policy, examining the impact of these on carers who may be either formal (paid) or informal (unpaid).

Mental health services are required to involve family, carers, and service users in the delivery and development of mental health services but how this can be done in routine practice is challenging. One potential solution is to prescribe practice standards or clear expectation relating to family involvement. This paper describes practice standards introduced to an adult mental health service and a study that aimed to evaluate the impact of the standards on practice.