subject: Service and support needs of families of people with disbailities [print this page] Service and support needs of families of people with disbailities
Several studies have looked at the support needs of carers in the community. McLean et al (1991) used semi-structured interviews with 20 stroke survivors and 20 family carers in order to assess their needs. They identified needs for help with physical care, improved communication with health professionals, help with handling the patient's emotionalism, help with maintaining and/or improving their own physical health including those problems resulting from caring (e.g. weight loss, backache and poor sleep), health education about their own health and that of their patients, respite needs and follow-up care after hospitalisation. Most of these identified needs resulted from the carers feeling neglected' after their relatives had been discharged from hospital. Pound, Gompertz and Ebrahim (1993) found similar needs: in their study carers were satisfied with the care the patient had received while in hospital, but 61 per cent of the carers were dissatisfied with some aspect of the services received since discharge. The provision of information on allowances, services needed after discharge, the provision of aids and adaptations and carer domiciliary support were matters of greatest dissatisfaction. In general, lack of information, particularly about the causes of stroke and recovery from stroke, was a common theme identified in most of the literature about the needs of carers (McLean et al 1991; Pound, Gompertz and Ebrahim 1993; Wellwood et al 1995). Another theme emerging from the literature was help with physical care (McLean et al 1991; Pound, Gompertz and Ebrahim1993). McKevitt and Wolf (2000) looked at the need for a community service for stroke families: about half of those they interviewed felt they would benefit from such a service. Carers viewed it as a service providing information about caring and advice on practical issues. They expressed the need for better communication with health professionals: this need may be justified because research has suggested that less than 2 per cent of community health professionals' time is spent advising carers (Gibbon 1994).
