Working with Family Carers

Care-giving transcends race, gender and age and most people will be a care giver or receiver (often both) at some point in their lives. This book explores the extent of caregiving in the UK and discusses its impact on individuals, groups and communities, as well as health and social care professionals.

It covers ways of identifying carers and providing information and advice and, given the likelihood of practitioners themselves providing care, a discussion regarding maintaining resilience and the extent to which personal experiences guide and inform practitioners response to work with carers is included. Exercises allow the reader to explore ways practitioners can engage with and support carers. The recent legislative changes brought about by the Care Act 2014 is discussed, as well as relevant policies.

Caregiving has the potential to transcend disciplines, so this text will appeal to students of a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, and across the professional arena including social work, nursing, occupational and physiotherapy.

The author is donating her royalties on this book to Carers UK and Carers Trust.

Dr Valerie Gant is an experienced social work practitioner and senior lecturer at the University of Chester. Val has written and published on a variety of subjects relating to health and social care.

Her personal experience of having a child with severe learning disabilities has both inspired and informed her in-depth professional knowledge of this area.

An active researcher, Val is interested in carers, disability issues and auto-ethnography, both as a process and a method, and has recently published a paper on this method in QSW.

She lives by the sea, and when she isn’t writing and researching she enjoys walking her dog and spending time with her family.