English

Carers look after family, friends or partners in help because they are ill, frail or have a disability. The care they provide is unpaid. In any year 301,000 adults in the UK become carers. Three out of five carers have had to give up work to care. Almost all of us have been or will be a carer during our lifetime.

Research on family caregivers usually focuses more on stress and burden, especially in the context of looking after a person with dementia. This leads to fewer considerations of positive aspects of care giving. Thus enhancing these positive aspects represents an innovative approach to caregivers' support. Furthermore, these aspects need more conceptualisation to underpin the development of such an approach. This article proposes a conceptual framework of the positive aspects of care giving based on an integrative literature review.

This paper is a report of part of a study to investigate the burden experienced by families giving care to a relative with dementia, the consequences of care for the mental health of the primary caregiver and the strategies families use to cope with the care giving stressors. The cost of caring for people with dementia is enormous, both monetary and psychological. Partners, relatives and friends who take care of patients experience emotional, physical and financial stress, and care giving demands are central to decisions on patient institutionalisation.

In the first of our Future Care series, Care and technology in the 21st centuryexplores the current landscape on care and technology and calls for a technological transformation in the way we support families caring for ill, frail and disabled loved ones.

The report argues that the way families already use technology to work, plan their lives, shop and socialize should also be reflected in how we care and calls on the Government to set up a new independent, expert taskforce to drive innovation and partnership on care technology.

This chapter examines the impact of caring on the lives of young people (i.e. those under 18). The authors point to the difficulties in enumerating such carers. They estimate numbers in excess of 50,000. Although the issue of young caring is not new, research into the phenomenon is. The authors refer to the initial studies of the late 1980s and early 1990s. They focus on the work of the Young Carers Research Group (YCRG), established in 1992. The Group has an on-going work programme which aims to give young carers a voice, raise awareness and influence policy.

Personalisation is about letting older and disabled people take risks others take for granted. But this means councils must find new ways of keeping them safe. [Introduction]

Carers have a pressing need to be directed to good sources of information, help and support. NHS organisations appear to be consulting with carers much less than the level envisaged in the National Strategy for Carers. There is still too much poor or indifferent consultation practice and service providers appear not to be following known good practice guidelines. Over eight out of ten carers said that caring had a negative impact on their own health. Almost nine out of ten reported that they feel stress, anxiety, depression or loss of sleep, due to being a carer.

During 2003 the Audit Commission conducted a study of services and support for the carers of older people in England, with a particular emphasis on the implementation of the national Carer's Strategy. In order to place this study in context, a background study was commissioned into the approaches taken in a number of other countries to supporting carers.

This ground-breaking report by Government, Employers for Carers and Carers UK, sets out the economic case for supporting the growing number of workers who also care for older or disabled relatives.