Article

Caring for an elderly, frail or disabled person has effects on physical and psychological health as well as financial and social consequences. There are 6 million informal carers in the UK and the primary care team together with other community services is expected to provide the support they need. However, most primary care team members feel ill equipped to do so and there is very little evidence about which interventions are effective.

This article advocates incorporating biographical narratives into social work practice involving older lesbian, gay and bisexual service users. Offering a critique of ‘sexuality-blind’ conditions in current policy and practice, the discussion draws on qualitative data to illustrate the potential benefits of narrative approaches for both practitioners and service users.

Aim: The amendment of legal care consultations in the context of the long-term care insurance law (2008) has broadened recent consulting practice within the action range of the nursing care insurance in Germany. The informational needs and consulting requests of the clients were not investigated so far. Our aim was to examine information needs and consulting requests of those in need of care and their informal carers. Methods: The consulting requests of visitors of 2 open citizen events were documented by the use of a semi-structured questionnaire.

The article focuses on young carers in Great Britain. It states that the recent split of council social services for adults and children has resulted in young carers falling through the gap. A pilot project is being made with the Children's Society to develop pathways for young carers and their families.

Background There is a lack of instruments to measure the needs, stigma and informal care of people with schizophrenia that take account of sociocultural variation and patients' and formal and informal carers' opinions and experiences. Aims To develop questionnaires to measure stigma, needs and informal (non-professional) care for people with schizophrenia. Method We undertook the study in seven countries and in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

The place of death of cancer patients has become an important theme in UK cancer and palliative care policy. This paper examines the place of death preferences of 41 terminally ill cancer patients and 18 of their informal carers, living in the Morecambe Bay area of north-west England. We interviewed cancer patients referred to the research team by 13 specialist palliative care professionals; patients had an estimated 3 months of life remaining.

This paper assesses some of the implications of one of the major social changes to have taken place in the West during the second half of the twentieth century — that is, the increased employment of women, together with normative changes in gender relations and in women's expectations. These changes have been linked to an increase in individualism, which itself is associated with the transcendence of ‘first modernity’. Thus it is suggested that new approaches to social analysis are required (Beck).

Several recent studies have documented a negative relationship between informal care-giving and labour market attachment in Great Britain. This paper examines the relationship from a longitudinal perspective using data from the Great Britain 1994–95 Family and Working Lives Survey. The first part of the paper studies the timing of informal care-giving to a sick, disabled or elderly person. This information is used in the second part to examine the effects of caring on employment.

The opportunity costs associated with the provision of informal care are usually estimated based on the reduced potential of the caregiver to partake in paid work (both in terms of whether they are able to undertake paid work, and if so the hours of work undertaken). In addition to the hours of informal care provided, these opportunity costs are also likely determined by the necessity to perform particular informal care tasks at specific moments of the day. The literature, to date, has largely overlooked this dimension of informal care.

Objective: To determine problems associated with electric-powered indoor/outdoor wheelchairs (EPIOCs) and the benefits perceived by their users.

Design: Hospital-based cohort study of all patients referred over a 19-month period.

Setting: Regional Wheelchair Service for North West London serving nine district wheelchair services.