Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

"Nurses play a vital role in improving the safety and quality of patient car -- not only in the hospital or ambulatory treatment facility, but also of community-based care and the care performed by family members. Nurses need know what proven techniques and interventions they can use to enhance patient outcomes. To address this need, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), with additional funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has prepared this comprehensive, 1,400-page, handbook for nurses on patient safety and quality -- Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. (AHRQ Publication No. 08-0043)." - online AHRQ blurb, http://www.ahrq.gov/qual/nurseshdbk/

Nurses have a unique role in redefining the way we view partnerships in healthcare— Transitioning from individualized to family-focused care is not only advocated by the Institute of Medicine; it’s becoming a way of life. Families want their perspectives and choices for their loved ones to be heard.

This text is one of the first comprehensive resources on understanding and working with families in the intensive care unit. The text provides a conceptual overview of the Family ICU Syndrome, a constellation of physical morbidity, psychopathology, cognitive deficits, and conflict. Outlining its mechanisms, the book presents a guide to combating the syndrome with an interdisciplinary team. The text represents the full array of the interdisciplinary team by also spotlighting administrative considerations for health care management and approaches to training different members of the health care team. Family voices are featured prominently in the text as well. The book also addresses the complete trajectory of needs of care, including survivorship and end-of-life care. Written by experts in the field, Families in the Intensive Care Unit: A Guide to Understanding, Engaging and Supporting at the Bedside is a state-of-the-art reference for all clinicians who work with families in the ICU.

Developing appropriate responses to an ageing population is recognized by policy makers throughout the developed world as a top priority, as is the vital contribution made by family caregivers. However, cultural, demographic and organizational differences between countries have encouraged diverse patterns of response to this common challenge. This book provides a systematic cross-cultural analysis of contemporary patterns and future trends in all major countries of the European Union. Additional interest is provided by including Poland emerging from the post- Communist block as the country at the forefront for joining the European Union. The book should be useful to European policy makers and academies involved in studying the health and social care needs of older people and the capacity, contribution and needs of family caregivers who provide care to older people. The book is also relevant for policy makers and researchers in other countries, mostly in North America and Australia who wish to study European approaches to supporting older people and family caregivers.

Care Managers: Working with the Aging Family addresses the unmet needs of care managers working with aging clients as well as the client's entire family. With its in-depth focus on the “ aging family system, this book fills a gap for medical case managers and geriatric care managers giving them tools to better meet the treatment goals of aging clients and their families, as the older clients move through the continuum of care in institutional based settings or community based settings. Care Managers: Working With the Aging Family uniquely focuses on helping the entire family unit through the process of death and dying, helping midlife siblings to work together to render care to aging parents. It adds proven techniques to the care manager repertoire such as family meetings, forgiveness, technology, and care giver assessment. It offers multiple tools to do an effective care plan so that both the needs of the family and the older client are met.

Because people’s contact with the criminal justice system comes in different shapes and forms, scholars are now broadening their analytical scope and examining the overall repercussions of criminal justice contact on families of offenders. Compared to Western societies, Japan is known for its lower crime rates and more pronounced use of informal social control. Thus, it offers a useful research site for examining how families in a low-crime society experience criminal justice contact and how they function as an integral part of the nation’s crime control mechanism. This book considers the role of the family in the lives of offenders and the criminal justice system in Japan. Looking particularly at gender and patriarchal power relations, it reveals how cultural notions of femininity prompt the criminal justice system to rely on women as its proxy. This book explores how families of offenders often step in to fill the voids left by criminal justice institutions and social services to provide offenders with all-inclusive care. The burden of supervising and rehabilitating offenders on top of the expectation to atone for the crimes also renders families ambivalent and ashamed. Whereas the state and criminal justice authorities tend to see offenders’ families as a crucial resource for prisoner reentry, this book highlights the necessity for addressing families’ needs before automatically assuming their support. It also pushes the boundaries of feminist criminology by showing how women can be affected by male criminality and male-dominated criminal justice institutions, other than as victims and offenders. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, gender studies, Japanese culture and all those interested in learning more about the criminal justice system in Japan.