Knighting, Katherine

Background: Service providers face difficult decisions about how best to develop services for the increasing numbers of young people with life-limiting conditions who require palliative care.

Objective: To explore alternative short break and emergency respite care options to children's hospice care.

Methods: A two-phase evaluation with young people, families and professionals.

Background: Burden and distress among family carers of people living with motor neurone disease (MND) are reported widely. Evidence-based screening tools to help identify these carers' needs and plan appropriate support are urgently needed. Aim: To pilot the Carers' Alert Thermometer (CAT), a triage tool developed to identify carers' needs, with family carers of people living with MND to determine its usefulness in identifying their need for support.

There is an increasing international policy direction to promote home death for dying patients which will impact on the demands placed on family carers. The early identification of carer needs and appropriate intervention can help avoid crisis situations for the carer and avoidable hospital admissions which are reported to be a global concern. The aim of the study was to explore what professionals and carers of patients with cancer and advanced progressive illness, in their last year of life, find burdensome and to develop an alert system for use by non-specialist staff.