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Abstract
The work of the Social Welfare Research Centre on family care of elderly people commenced in 1981 with a survey of carers in New South Wales and Tasmania. This first stage investigated the experience of 79 people who were looking after an elderly relative at home. A monograph published in 1982 laid out the theoretical issues in the analysis of family care and presented data from the first stage of the survey. In 1983, the SWRC made a further investigation of families caring for elderly relatives. The sample for the second survey, conducted in South Australia and New South Wales, consisted not only of families still providing care but also of 40 families who had recently stopped caring and had placed their relatives in a nursing home. A total of 79 families were studied in this second stage. This monograph is the second of three publications reporting the Social Welfare Research Centre's work on family care of elderly people. It reports data from the whole study (i.e. both the 1981 and 1983 survey samples) but does not attempt to extrapolate the findings. Its purpose is to present detailed survey results for discussion by key State and Federal policy makers in the health and welfare areas at a SWRC research meeting early in 1984. The final volume, due for publication later in 1984 after consultation with service providers and government officers, will analyse the findings and examine the policy ramifications of the data presented here.