This study examined whether formal care services delivered to frail older people's homes in France and Israel substitute for or complement informal support. The two countries have comparable family welfare systems but many historical, cultural and religious differences. Data for the respondents aged 75 or more years at the first wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHA...

BACKGROUND Previous research showed that deprived individuals are less likely to attend breast screening and those providing intense amounts of informal care tend to be more deprived than non-caregivers. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between informal caregiving and uptake of breast screening and to determine if socio-economic gradients in screening attendance were explai...

BACKGROUND Informal care is often not included in economic evaluations in healthcare, while the impact of caregiving can be relevant for cost-effectiveness recommendations from a societal perspective. The impact of informal care can be measured and valued with the CarerQol instrument, which measures the impact of informal care on seven important burden dimensions (CarerQol-7D) and values this i...

Much care for older, ill and disabled people is provided by informal unpaid carers usually in the context of familial relationships. Such care can involve providing support with aspects of daily living including shopping, transport to medical appointments as well as physical and personal care. Those who receive informal care may be living with multiple health conditions that give rise to comple...

BACKGROUND Many countries face substitution from formal to informal care. It is essential that a sufficient number of caregivers, such as family, friends or neighbors, are willing and able to lend care to address the needs of ill or elderly persons. We investigated whether the general public, who might become caregivers in the future, and current informal caregivers align with the shift to more...

In rural Uganda care for those who are ill tends to be home based because of inadequate and expensive health care facilities, lack of medication and poor staffing levels in health units. Research findings suggest that women are responsible for the bulk of caring activities. This paper questions the assumption that female informal carers are in a position to cope with illness episodes in the hom...

Chronic pain is associated with large societal costs, but few studies have investigated the total costs of chronic pain with respect to elderly subjects. The elderly usually require informal care, care performed by municipalities, and care for chronic diseases, all factors that can result in extensive financial burdens on elderly patients, their families, and the social services provided by the...

BACKGROUND Nearly 50 million Americans provide informal care to an older relative or friend. Many are members of the "sandwich generation", providing care for elderly parents and children simultaneously. Although evidence suggests that the negative health consequences of caregiving are more severe for sandwiched caregivers, little is known about how these associations vary by sociodemographic f...

An interview study of participants in primary health carebased CoCPs highlighted their potential complexity. We found that the visual representation of CoCPs as maps facilitated the assimilation of this complexity. Each patient was shown their map to confirm whether they agreed that it represented their care world. The optimal care and wellbeing of the patient at the centre of the CoCP is the c...

As a researcher and consultant I have coordinated local pilots and European research projects to analyse and improve long-term care for older people by better integrating health and social care systems. One of my conclusions from the wide range of initiatives that have been taken over the past two decades in Europe has been the need to treat long-term care as a system in its own right. Long-ter...