English

Continual and/or repetitive informal caring and the part childhood, developmental and socially constructed identity play roles in adult informal care, form the background to the questions of why individuals gravitate toward such relationships and why they often continue to care in the face of overwhelming obstacles. A synthesis of the literature is presented, leading to personal histories as a method of discovery. The Biographic Narrative Interpretive Method’s minimalist interview technique is put forth as the key data-gathering event.

This paper presents a brief review of literature relating to children in families with a disabled member, including the 'young carers' and disability studies literature, and relevant works from the social psychology and sociology of childhood. Key themes identified in the literature are then illustrated by findings from two exploratory research studies that sought to explore the experiences and service needs of children in families with a disabled member, within two Scottish areas.

The majority of people with degenerative neurological conditions are cared for within their own families. Cognitive impairment can be a significant and increasing symptom of these conditions. In this article we report how a team of experienced researchers carried out a meta-ethnography of qualitative research articles focusing on the impact of caring for a loved one with cognitive impairment. We followed the seven-step process outlined by Noblit and Hare. Synthesized findings from 31 papers suggest emotional impact is complex and uncertain and varies from day to day.

Care giving to a dementia sufferer is complex (Parsons, 1997) and inherently stressful (Baldwin et al 1989). It is suggested that the predominance of the care-giver stressor-burden research paradigm during the last 30 years has frequently been uni-dimensional, objectively oriented, generally equivocal, and unconvincing in its findings. Dillehay and Sandys (1990), suggest that preoccupation with such typically narrow approaches has delayed the much-needed development of a more accurate understanding of the lived experience (the phenomenology of care-giving).

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers is a UK-wide network of 144 independent Carers’ Centres, which offer support including information, training, facilitating access to statutory services and benefits reviews. The Trust supports the network by providing a national voice for carers, and facilitating The Network to provide carers with the support they need. This report shows that an investment of less than £5 million in services provided by five carers' centres resulted in at least £73 million worth of social gains in a year.

This study describes what types of service use barriers older adults' informal care-givers perceive and examines how these barriers differentiate care-giver service use patterns. Analysing the 2004 National Long-Term Care Survey and Informal Care-giver Data Set (N=1908) in the United States of America, this study reports the prevalence of service barriers for each type of service as well as for overall service use.

Since the community care reforms of the early 1990s, practical support for informal carers has become one of the key building blocks of community care policy in England and Wales. In 2004, Linda Pickard wrote a report for the Audit Commission called The Effectiveness and Cost-effectiveness of Support and Services for Informal Carers of Older People. This summary highlights the key points.

The contribution made by informal carers to the provision of care in the community in the UK is formally acknowledged in the 1995 Carers (Recognition and Services) Act. This legislation has focussed attention, once again, on the relationship between formal services and those providing informal care. The Act has re-created a lack of clarity about the position carers hold in the carer dyad. Findings are presented here from an exploratory study about the experience of dementia.

Place of death is at times suggested as an outcome for palliative care services. This study aimed to describe longitudinal preferences for place of care and place of death over time for patients and their caregivers. Longitudinal paired data of patient/caregiver dyads from a prospective unblinded cluster randomised control trial were used. Patients and caregivers were separately asked by the palliative care nurse their preference at that time for place of care and place of death.

In this paper, we present estimates of the effect of informal care provision on female caregivers' health. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel and assess effects up to seven years after care provision. The results suggest that there is a considerable negative short-term effect of informal care provision on mental health which fades out over time. Five years after care provision the effect is still negative but smaller and insignificant. Both short- and medium-term effects on physical health are virtually zero throughout.