Journal article

Dementia in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is an area of significant health and community concern. In this article, we use a hermeneutic mode of interpretation to deepen understanding of experience and meaning in dementia for family carers of older Aboriginal people in urban Australia.

Background: Current evidence suggests that patients with dementia find memory tests humiliating and embarrassing. However, the knowledge concerning carers’ experience of witnessing patients with dementia undergo memory screening has not been fully explored.

Aims: This study was to explore the experiences of relatives of patients with dementia witnessing memory-screening tests.

Background: The rapid increase in the number of elderly family caregivers underlines the need for new support systems. Internet-delivered psychological interventions are a potential approach, as they are easy to access for family caregivers who are often homebound with their care recipient.

Caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) can experience loss and grief long before the death of the person. Although such experience of caregiver grief is measurable, available scales (such as the Marwit–Meuser Caregiver Grief Inventory, MM-CGI) are lengthy and have overlaps with other caregiving constructs. We developed a briefer scale that captures the essence of caregiver grief—with comparable psychometric properties and total score to MM-CGI, as well as less overlap with other caregiving constructs.

The diminished wellbeing of caregivers is well documented, but studies typically draw upon coarse measures of time use and thus provide limited understanding of the role of specific care activities in the daily lives of care providers.

Background: The growing population of aging adults relies on informal caregivers to help meet their health care needs, get help with decision making, and gather health information. Objective: The objective of this study was to examine health information–seeking behaviors among caregivers and to identify caregiver characteristics that contribute to difficulty in seeking health information.

The ageing global population has seen increasing numbers of older people living with chronic health problems, declining function, and frailty. As older people seek to live out their years at home, family members, friends and neighbours (informal caregivers) are increasingly relied upon for support. Moreover, pressured health systems and shorter hospital length of stay mean that informal caregivers can find themselves supporting the older person who is still unwell after discharge.

Walking and exercising are an important part of living well with dementia. People with dementia may have an inability to recognize familiar places, find a familiar location, or become disoriented and are more likely to become missing. The aim of this article is to identify what factors influence family caregivers of people with dementia reporting them missing to the police. We used a qualitative approach based on semi-structured interviews of 12 family caregivers of people with dementia in UK.

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.

Summary: This paper focuses on the impact of a personal budget – either in the form of a direct payment or managed personal budget – on the role of unpaid carers of older budget holders. Data were collected via postal survey of 1500 unpaid carers and semi-structured interviews with 31 carers. Findings: Unpaid carers played a central role in supporting older budget holders irrespective of the type of budget received.