Caring for Older People: Carers

Caring by families and friends is the backbone of community care. Carers face physical, emotional, social, and financial problems. They need recognition, information, and support from the health professionals with whom they and the person they care for come in contact. Much information is available to assist carers and to enable their doctors to help them in their caring role.

Since the 1950s there has been a gradual shift in the provision of care from hospitals to care in the community. A large proportion of community care is “informal,” provided mainly by family. The general household surveys of 1985 and 1990 showed that there are as many as six million carers in Great Britain, providing varying degrees of care. The transition to the caring role is often slow, following the older person's physiological decline and gradual accumulation of diseases. However, some people are precipitated into caring for an older person—for example, when that person suffers a stroke.