Informal Care Networks Research Articles

What Changes are of Value in Severely Disturbed Children?

Useful outcome research must use measures that are relevant to the clinical group in question. A literature review identified that little effort has been made to identify which areas of outcome are important for severely disturbed children with complex disorders, who are in day treatment. For a group of such children attending a psychiatric–educational day unit, this study set out to identify, at a qualitative level, which areas of change were valued by carers, teachers and clinicians. The results suggest that for children with severe psychiatric and educational problems a useful intervention need not involve large changes in the child. It was more important that the child’s informal and formal care network: carers, teachers, clinical staff and the professionals in other agencies, were able to reach a common understanding of the child’s difficulties, develop similar expectations of the child’s needs, and be able to agree on appropriate future plans for the child.

Old and cared for: place of residence for elderly women in eighteenth-century Toulouse.

Although they lacked the ideological and economic advantages of patriarchal authority, women in eighteenth-century France were no less likely than men to receive support in their old age from friends and family. Elderly women rarely lived on their own, and when they could not rely on their children for support, they found care in more distant kin and friends. This support was not derived from economic coercion but from a vague sense of moral duty. Informal networks of care sufficed for both the rich and the poor except in cases of extreme illness.

Informal Care Networks of Older Adults with an Intellectual Disability

This report describes a study of people with intellectual disability over the age of 40 years who were still living with relatives in the family home. Previous studies have revealed that there exist different types of social networks and that identifying network type and available informal support is important for planning effective service delivery. The main focus of this investigation was on the structure and characteristics of informal support networks and the pattern of support that occurred.The sample consisted of 32 individuals with an intellectual disability, mean age 46.7 years. Overall, the study found that carers received little support from other family members and the wider community in performing personal and household care tasks. The informal networks of older adults with learning disability operated on a hierarchical basis with primary family members, particularly parents and siblings, providing the bulk of informal support. Other relatives and friends and neighbours played a less significant role in informal care networks. The study also draws attention to the increasing number of elderly carers who, often single‐handedly, provide the primary sources of care for older adults with learning disability. Contrary to what might be expected, it was found that the size of an individual's network, in terms of numbers of localised kin members, was not related to the amount of support the main carer received from others.

Who cares? The size, scope, and composition of the caregiver support system.

The informal care networks of 242 impaired older people were examined in terms of the primary caregiver and secondary helpers. Most primary caregivers had at least one secondary helper; 88% identified helpers who provided hands-on help, 19% reported that helpers contributed financially, and 44% had helpers involved in care decisions. The size of the network was larger for direct care compared to financial or decision-making assistance. Almost half of primary caregivers reported that their spouse helped. It was expected that after controlling for characteristics of the primary caregiver and of the older person, that characteristics of the secondary caregiver network would influence the amount and type of primary caregiver assistance and formal care used by the older person. However, both hours and type of care by the primary caregiver were independent of size, scope, and composition of the secondary helper network. This independence suggests that efforts to alter the secondary caregiver network may have limited effects on the primary caregiver.

Reliance by gay men and intravenous drug users on friends and family for AIDS-related care.

A group of gay-identified men (n = 81) and intravenous drug users (n = 88) diagnosed with AIDS in San Francisco were interviewed regarding their use of friends and family to meet their care needs. Analytic of quantitative data revealed that gay men relied more than did IDUs on friends for care. Neither group relied primarily on their families for care. Analysis of the qualitative data identified five primary barriers to care. First, many people with AIDS are not accustomed to asking for help and often avoid it when possible. Second, the social stigma surrounding AIDS sometimes leads to isolation. Third, some people with AIDS have kin with health problems of their own, thereby sometimes compromising this potential source of care. Fourth, the AIDS epidemic has devastated identifiable sub-populations, leaving surviving members of these groups emotionally exhausted and sometimes unable to provide as much help as they might have liked. Finally, some respondents choose to voluntarily cut themselves off from 'supportive' relationships that they perceive to be destructive now that they have been diagnosed with a fatal illness. Professional care providers and health care planners should be aware of dynamics within informal care networks of people with AIDS that may leave patients without necessary care.

Assisting Disabled Chinese Old People through Informal Caring Networks

It has been taken for granted that Chinese communities in Hong Kong would have an extended family or large kinship network to render such ‘care in the community.’ This exploratory study was conducted in a community based rehabilitation project. A great majority of disabled elderly people's informal caring networks were limited. Although they were physically ‘in the community’, they had limited access to timely care from their family members, friends and neighbours. More active roles as ‘brokers’ linking the disabled and elderly to community support services and ‘facilitators’ informal self-help groups are suggested.

Community Care in a Rural Patch in Cumbria, England

In this article, we report the results of an ethnographic study of a social service patch in rural Cumbria, England, during a period of major change in national government policy and local government practices. Some characteristics of the patch and its people are described. Formal and informal networks of care and manifest and latent social service and community care resources are identified. The needs and resources of the patch are analyzed in terms of five conditions thought to be important for effective community-oriented social services: (1) localization of services, (2) integration of services, (3) broadly defined roles for staff, (4) high autonomy for staff, and (5) inclusion of prevention services.

The Social Production of Welfare and Consumption of Social Services

ABSTRACTThe social production of welfare provides a theoretical framework for the analysis of the consumption of social services and the impact of welfare policies. Based on the new home economics, it represents the unit of consumption as a unit of production of commodities. With the advent of disability this unit extends from the household to the informal care network. Social care agencies become involved when the production of basic commodities, such as nutrition and personal care, fall below threshold levels which threaten the survival of the informal care network. The social production of welfare allows comparisons across systems and provides the starting point for the development of tools for empirical analysis.

Informal Networks of Care: Issues Raised by Barclay

Informal Networks of Care: Issues Raised by Barclay

Community Care and the Family: A Case for Equal Opportunities?

ABSTRACTDespite the existence of sex discrimination legislation certain social policies appear to militate against equal opportunities between the sexes. Community care policies are a case in point, especially with current interest shifting towards ‘care by the community’, and the presumed existence of ‘informal caring networks’, with a view to their effective mobilization at a time of cutbacks both in public expenditure and in domiciliary social service provision for groups such as the handicapped and the elderly. To the extent that community care policies rely on women's unpaid domestic labour and may necessitate their withdrawal from the labour market, such policies could be counter-productive to the promotion of ‘equal opportunities’. The challenge is to devise community care policies which do not disadvantage women and which give men ‘equal opportunities’ to take on caring roles usually assigned to women.