Caregivers of the Elderly and Younger Adults with Disabilities: An Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

Social care policies for frail elderly people and other people with disabilities are based on the notion that people who need such support should be able to live an independent life in their own homes for as long as possible and should only have to move to residential care when care at home is no longer a feasible option. It is now recognised that the continuing support of vulnerable people at home relies very heavily on care provided by unpaid and informal carers, often family members, supplemented by domiciliary and community-based services. In recent years there has been a burgeoning research literature, both in Australia and overseas, identifying the role of carers and the range of issues associated with caregiving. Amongst these, gender, ageing, employment, and psychological burden and stress are the most prominent. This annotated bibliography was undertaken as part of the Social Policy Research Centre's portfolio research program funded in 1992-93 by the Department of Health, Housing, Local Government and Community Services (now the Department of Human Services and Health). The financial support provided by that Department has been important in allowing the Centre to further extend its research into community services policy. This bibliography is part of a broader project entitled A Meta-Analysis of Australian Research on Informal Care, the aim of which is to bring together, for the first time, Australian and selected overseas research on informal caregiving for elderly people and adults with disabilities.