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The Access Initiative is run by the Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People Project in partnership with Edinburgh Council, West Lothian Council, minority ethnic carers, and older people. Its twin aims are to give carers from Edinburgh's south Asian and Chinese communities a break from caring and to provide culturally competent services for older members of the family who need care. [Introduction]

Research on caregiving children tends to be limited to children's caregiving experiences of parents with a specific disease or disability. This has led to a common perception that children's caregiving is a single, uniform and often long-term experience. Whilst this is most certainly the case for many children in economically more advanced countries, this may not hold true in rural Africa, where poverty and AIDS can have significant knock-on effects on entire families and communities.

Interest in the concerns of cancer patients’ carers has been growing steadily over the last decade reflected in key cancer service policy documents [DOH, 1995. A Policy Framework for Commissioning Cancer Services (Calman-Hine Report). London, HMSO; DOH, 2002. The NHS Cancer Plan]. Despite this acknowledgement, it can be argued that less is known about carers’ experience in the cancer treatment context. Carers can be defined as someone who shares the experience of cancer with the patient.

Hot Topic series. Comments on the incidence and impact of Alzheimer Disease, focusing on the effect on informal carers and the need for services to be provided to support them and allow patients to lead independent lives. [(BNI unique abstract)] 0 references

As more people are living longer this growing number of older people means an increase in mental health problems. Twenty-five per cent of people over 85 develop dementia and between ten and sixteen per cent of those over 65 develop clinical depression. In addition, people who developed severe and enduring mental health problems such as schizophrenia when young are now growing older (Audit Commission, 2000). Most people with dementia live in the community. About half are cared for at home by a family carer, usually a spouse or adult child (Keady & Nolan, 1995).

Access to regular, high-quality respite care has a beneficial impact on a carer’s ability to fulfil their caring role, but provision varies widely. The current study aims to report family and informal carers’ perceptions of respite care services offered to them by their local authority. A mixed method, triangulated design, yielded both quantitative and qualitative data. Members of a parent/carer federation were sent a questionnaire which included a section on ‘respite care’; 151 of 647 responded. Two focus groups were held with 15 carers who had previously completed the questionnaire.

This paper reviews the challenges faced by unpaid family carers and the current support and services available to them. It argues that current carer support should be built on and presents the evidence for doing so, including evidence of the opportunities to make substantial savings in residential care costs. The paper suggests a new way in which proposed resource allocation and personal budget systems could be developed in order to sustain caring, avoiding the risk of a new perverse incentive to families to end caring roles.