Article

The article reviews the web site www.youngcarer.com. Young carers have specific needs that are not being met and this initiative provides information advice and training to anyone who works with young carers and their families. The website provides an online forum for those working with young carers, sharing ideas and experiences and identifying scope for collaborative project work.

The article focuses on the Young Carers Program of Hospice Toronto, a non-profit group that provides volunteer-based, in-home hospice and palliative care services. Information on the key objectives of the program is provided. Both children and youth who assumes a caregiving role for a family member are supported by the program. A variety of weekly activities, workshops and special events are facilitated by the program throughout Toronto, Ontario.

Objective: The lack of adequate conceptualisation and operationalisation of quality of life (QoL) limits the ability to have a consistent body of evidence to improve QoL research and practice in informal caregiving for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). Thus, we conducted a meta-synthesis of qualitative research to improve the conceptual understanding of the experiences of MS carers and to identify factors that affect carers’ QoL.

There has been little work on the ethical issues facing non-professionals who care for relatives or others with dementia. A qualitative pilot study was conducted in ten such individuals, eight of them women, caring for persons drawn mainly from one general practice. The interviews indicated that many of the dilemmas faced by carers are ethical and that the issues differ from those faced by professionals. Ethical issues are sometimes the most troublesome matter for carers. Unlike issues for professionals, they arise from a personal context and are shaped by long-term relationships.

Focuses on the study conducted by the University of Wales which identifies the social care needs of informal carers for dependent adult relatives from a Bangladeshi community in Wales. Health risk assessment of the community; Assessment of the health care services in the community; Necessity for community nurses to be culturally proficient through the provision of accurate education.

The Oxford Friends and Family Empowerment (OFAFE) service is a carer support service that originated in a collaboration between the Oxfordshire Complex Needs Service and the national mental health charity Rethink. OFAFE provides support and education for adults supporting an individual with a personality disorder. This paper describes the background and operation of the OFAFE service, along with the early stages of the development of a similar service for young carers, the Young Friends and Family Empowerment (YFAFE) service.

The aim of this meta-synthesis was to explore young carers' accounts of caring for a family member with an illness, difficulty or disability, and to promote a phenomenological understanding of their experiences. A meta-ethnographic method of meta-synthesis was adopted, utilising the process of reciprocal translation to synthesise 11 qualitative studies. The synthesis yielded four main concepts: (1) becoming a caring person; (2) the adult child - the marks of being different; (3) who is a carer?

Objective: To describe the experiences of illness and needs and use of services in two groups of patients with incurable cancer, one in a developed country and the other in a developing country.

Design: Scotland: longitudinal study with qualitative interviews. Kenya: cross sectional study with qualitative interviews.

Settings: Lothian region, Scotland, and Meru District, Kenya.

This paper examines the conversational and discursive processes through which situations are constructed as a risk by informal carers and community psychiatric nurses working with people who have dementia. The data were taken from 24 tape recordings of domiciliary meetings between primary informal carers for people with dementia and their community psychiatric nurse (CPN). Data were analysed using techniques developed from conversation analysis and discourse analysis. The analysis identifies four stages associated with the construction of risk by informal carers and CPNs.