Weatherly, Helen

Carers contribute essential support to enable people with dementia to continue living within the community. Admiral Nurses provide specialist dementia support for carers of people with dementia, including offering expert emotional support and guidance, and work to join up different parts of the health and social care system to address needs in a co-ordinated way. The cost-effectiveness of this service is not clear. We undertook a feasibility study to explore related outcomes and costs for these carers.

Background: Unpaid carers are the mainstay of support for people with dementia. Admiral Nursing (AN) is the only specialist nursing service that specifically focuses on supporting such carers, but evidence of its effectiveness, costs and relationships with other health and social care services is limited. This project aimed to address this gap and explore the feasibility of a full-scale formal evaluation.

It is important to find out which services benefit people with dementia and their carers most: in particular whether carers gain more support from respite care and short breaks or from other services. Hilary Arksey and Helen Weatherly review the research evidence to date and comment on its limitations, given the wide range of different services covered.