Partnerships In Family Care

z • What are the key features of partnerships between family and professional carers? • How do partnerships change over time? • What is needed to help create the best working partnerships? Forging partnerships between service users, family carers and service providers is a key theme in both policy and academic literature. However, what such partnerships mean, and how they can be created and sustained while responding to change over time, is far from clear. This book considers how family and professional carers can work together more effectively in order to provide the highest quality of care to people who need support in order to remain in their own homes. It adopts a temporal perspective looking at key transitions in caregiving and suggests the most appropriate types of help at particular points in time. It draws on both empirical and theoretical sources emerging from several countries and relating to a number of differing caregiving contexts in order to illustrate the essential elements of ‘relationship-centred’ care. Partnerships in Family Care is important reading for all health care students and professionals with an interest in community and home care for the ill, disabled and elderly. Ulla Lundh is Docent and Senior Lecturer at the University of Linköping, Sweden. She has particular interests in the needs of older people and their carers and has been engaged in several studies that have sought to develop partnerships between family and formal caregiving systems. Gordon Grant holds a Research Chair in Cognitive Disability in the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Sheffield, and Doncaster and South Humber Healthcare NHS Trust. His main interests concern family caregiving of vulnerable groups and the support needs of people with severe and complex learning disabilities. John Keady is Senior Lecturer in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Wales, Bangor. His main interests are in the needs of people with dementia and their carers, and service responses to these needs. cover design: Kate Prentice ISBN 0-335-21261-1 9 780335 212613 Nolan, Lundh, Grant and Keady Mike Nolan is Professor of Gerontological Nursing at the University of Sheffield. He has long-standing interests in the needs of family carers and of vulnerable older people in a range of care environments, and has published extensively in these areas. Partnerships in Family Care Partnerships in Family Care understanding the caregiving career Partnerships in Family Care: understanding the caregiving career Mike Nolan, Ulla Lundh Gordon G