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In France, a wide range of care and support services exist for community dwelling people with Alzheimer's disease (AD). These are coordinated by the general practitioner (GP). We investigated interventions that were ‘prescribed’ by French GPs and analysed their perceived barriers to arranging these. Thirty-nine percent of GPs responded to a postal survey, which was sent to 1105 physicians belonging to the Sentinel GP Research Network and to 524 GPs consulting in the Rhône-Alpes region of France.

Context: Study of the problems and requirements of the main caregiver providing home care for dementia patients that have resulted in the patient being institutionalised.

Objectives: To determine the reasons for placing the dementia patient in an institution.

Resources: Self-administered questionnaire of 48 questions on the patient and caregiver, including a list of complaints, given to the main caregiver. Medical questionnaire on the patient filled in by the geriatrician.

Purpose – It is generally agreed that carers in mental health care play a vital role in helping people to maintain their place in the community and reducing the time clients spend in hospital or residential settings. The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual approach to involving carers in higher education by acknowledging their contribution to improving practice and identify the impact upon student learning in mental health and social care professions. 

Nurse-led case management programmes have become increasingly popular over the last 15 years. Countries such as the USA, Canada, Sweden and the Netherlands have long running case management programmes in place for frail elderly people. The Department of Health in England has recently introduced a 'community matron' role to provide case management to patients with highly complex long-term conditions; a group that is predominantly comprised of elderly people.

Heroin addiction, being a chronic condition, can have a devastating impact on carers of addicts. However, the information and support needs of carers often go unrecognised and unaddressed. ‘Carers' clinics’ are one such information-sharing and support group for carers of heroin addicts. This simple yet innovative service provision has been enthusiastically recieved by carers and has been running effectively since April 2007. We believe this scheme can be replicated across other services.

In 1999, the Stroke Association set up a project to promote home-based occupational therapy for patients who had had a stroke and been discharged home from hospital. As part of the service evaluation, focus groups for service users and carers were set up in two of the sites to consult users about the changes in their quality of life during the period of the home therapy. A total of 11 service users and 9 carers attended the groups, representing 30% of the service users and 27% of the carers involved in the project.

BACKGROUND: The negative health impacts of prolonged caregiving are widely reported. However, there is a paucity of evidence concerning the impacts of a lifetime of caring on older parents of offspring with learning disabilities.

DESIGN AND METHODS: An exploratory postal survey including the Medical Outcome Study (Short Form) 36 version 2 (SF-36v2) was completed by 100 older parent carers. The reported survey is part of a larger mixed method study including in-depth interviews.

BACKGROUND: Although carers' reactions to schizophrenic illness in a close family member may have important implications for the patient and for themselves, little is known of factors that influence the way carers respond. In the area of physical health problems, people's models of their illness or illness representations have been found to be related to the ways they react and cope with their illness. This study examines the use of a modified form of the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ) to investigate illness models in a sample of carers of schizophrenia patients.

This study reports on the process of developing a maintenance programme manual following the Medical Research Council guidelines representing the ‘phase I’ or modelling. This study uses an inductive thematic analysis approach to examine user perceptions on the maintenance cognitive stimulation therapy (CST) programme. Three focus groups were carried out with people with dementia, three with staff, and three with family carers of people with dementia. In total 17 people with dementia, 13 staff and 18 family carers took part in separate focus groups.

Background: Little evidence is available about how quality of life (QoL) changes as dementia progresses.

Objectives: We explored QoL trajectories over a 20-month period and examined what predicted change in QoL.