The experience of caring for someone over 75 years of age: results from a Scottish General Practice population.

Aims And Objectives: To understand the unpaid carers' experiences of looking after someone aged over 75 at all stages of their caring career.

Background: The role of, and support for, unpaid carers have become central in the debates surrounding community care in the UK. This paper presents the findings of a study to elicit the complexities of the caring role and inform the Primary Health Care Team to help support carers more effectively.

Meeting carers' information needs.

Unpaid carers provide the backbone for community care, supplying the everyday support and care to users which paid carers would otherwise have to provide. There is increasing political awareness about the need to support carers if the rhetoric of community care is to be a reality. Both research and policy documents emphasise the carer's need for information.

The development of a screening tool to identify carers in a general practice by a large-scale mailed survey: the experience in one Scottish general practice.

Aims And Objectives: To determine the feasibility of a screening tool to identify carers in a general practice.

Background: The need to support informal carers is well established in policy and practice, but many carers continue to lack the support they need. Identifying carers is a fundamental precondition to providing them with support.