Umbrella review of family-focused care interventions supporting families where a family member has a long-term condition.

AIM: The aim of this study was to summarize reviews of family-focused care interventions that support families with a family member with a long-term condition across the life course. DESIGN: Umbrella review. DATA SOURCES: Medline (1946-2019), Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2019), Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effect and EMBASE (1947-2019), CINAHL (1981-2019), Health Technology Assessment Database (2019) and PsycInfo (1806-2019). REVIEW METHODS: All authors independently undertook title/abstract screening, data extraction and quality appraisal on a cluster of papers, working in groups of two or three to reach a consensus. The AMSTAR tool was used to appraise the quality of the studies and descriptive syntheses were undertaken. RESULTS: Fifteen reviews met the selection criteria. Overall family-focussed care and associated terms were poorly defined. Typically interventions were educational or psychological therapy/counselling with the goal of empowering individuals to manage their condition. There is some evidence that family-focused care interventions can improve clinical/biological health measures and self-care outcomes such as treatment adherence. Multicomponent psychosocial interventions that include cognitive-behavioural therapy, skills training, education and support and are focused on wider family members appear to improve family relationships and martial functioning. CONCLUSION: Long-term conditions have an impact on individual and family health and well-being, yet the impact of family-focused care interventions on family outcomes was overall inconclusive. A better understanding of how family-focused care interventions improve the health and well-being of individuals and their families is needed to promote the inclusion of family-focused care into practice. IMPACT: Supporting people with a long-term condition is a key health and social care priority. Family-focused care interventions have potential to improve the health and well-being of individuals and families, but there is a need to evaluate their clinical and cost-effectiveness. The findings from this review could be used by funding bodies when commissioning research for long-term conditions.

Developing a typology of mobile phone usage in social care: A critical review of the literature.

The ways in which mobile phones have transformed the boundaries of time and space and the possibilities of communication have profoundly affected our lives. However, there is little research on the use of mobiles in social care though evidence is emerging that mobile phones can play an important role in delivering services. This paper is based on a scoping review of the international literature in this area. A typology of mobile interventions is suggested. While most mobile phone interventions remain unidirectional and sit within traditional social care service provider-service user relationships, a minority are bi- or multidirectional and contain within them the potential to transform these traditional relationships by facilitating a collective development of social networks and social capital. Such transformations are accompanied by a range of issues and dilemmas that have made many service providers reluctant to engage with new technologies. We suggest that our typology is a useful model to draw on when researching the use of mobile phones in social care to support and empower isolated, marginalised and vulnerable service users.