Carers are family members who provide care for another person who is sick, unable to manage daily life unaided
Governments are interested in family care because, without family carers, providing care can be prohibitively expensive
It is important to indentify carers so that help, and in some cases financial support, can be provided
However, it can be difficult to identify carers because; much of what happens in families is private; many people resist being labelled as a carer or a cared for person; it can be hard to measure how much caring someone does;some caring is reciprocal - there is give and take; and more than one person may be invovled in caring

Care relationships can be stressful and demandng
The quality of the relationship between the person which is cared for and the carer is influenced by the dynamics of the family life, past and present
Lack of information about alternatives, and a sense of duty is often means that family members do not feel they have a choice about taking on there role of carer
It often takes a crisis before people ask for help

The case study is not typical, but there are many families in a similar position
The majority of carers are women, and most people care for are older
The experience of caring varies when the people are at the receiving end are young people, but there are many common themes
Although caring has long been done within families, it is only became a matter of public interest in the late twentieth century

In some communities in the mid-twentieth century, care was accomplished by a netwook of family members living near to one another, Daughters usually took the main responsibilty for caring

Changes in the way families live has led to caring becoming less of a shared responsibility between family members

However, there is little evidence that families have rejected the idea that they have a responsibilty to care for family member as they grow out and frail, but smaller families and greater distances mean that the types of contact has changed

Health care has been completely transformed by biomedical science, particularly over the last century
For the purpose of acute care, priority is given in hospitals to the biomedical model - focusing more on treating the body than the person
Being a hospital patient is an extreme version of the sick role.
The traditional hospital patient role is at odds with the more expert patient role
As acute care has changed, registered nurses tend to spend increasing amounts of time working with advanced medical equipemnt and computer systems and have alos taken over some of the former tasks of doctors
Meanwhile, health care assistants have increasingly taken over bedside caring tasks from registered nurses, although continuing to work under their supervision
Health care roles in hospital were traditionally organised in a hierarchy of biomedical expertise, but new forms of team working have emerged in recent times.
Health is not straightway concept. It involves minimising disease and maximsing psychological and social well-being
Levels of health are affected by biomedical advances and also by social change, such as income levels, quality of housing, diet, patterns of exercise
As society changes, the paternalistic relationships of the traditional biomedical model of health care are giving way to partnership and support for patient expertise
Recent government policy supports these less hierarchical forms of health care relationships
Government policy aims to break down barriers between hospital and community care, shifting acute care, where possible, close to everyday world of the service user.
Recent trends in diabetes care provide excellent examples of these government policies in action.

	Created by Charlie_eeyore almost 11 years ago

	Copied by Laura Ness almost 11 years ago

Note on Block 1 Key Points, created by Laura Ness on 05/29/2013.

Block 1 Key Points