Basic Conditions for Support of Young Carers in School: A Secondary Analysis of the Perspectives of Young Carers, Parents, Teachers, and Counselors.

Young carers face a variety of challenges at school. While schools can be vital places of support, the assistance they receive at school often seems selective and fails to consider the unique life situations of individual students. This paper examines the perspective of multiple actors in the student's school environment and explores how schools can develop comprehensive, sustainable support systems for young carers-systems that consider and involve as many actors as possible in the student's school environment. In a secondary analysis of two interview studies, we analyzed how young carers as well as their parents, teachers, and school counsellors perceived the school support the carers received. We then developed an integrated model that incorporates these differing perspectives. The model offers an approach for implementing low-threshold support for young carers within existing school structures in relation to their family situation and outlines conditions that can support both recognized and "invisible" young carers, as well as other students.

Working with a domestic assessment system to estimate the need of support and care of elderly and disabled persons: results from field studies.

This article describes the results of field studies performed over a period between five months and 24 months. The objectives of these studies were to collect long-term real-life data to evaluate how these data can be mapped to items on standardized assessment tests and which presentation method is most suitable to inform caregivers about critical situations and changes in health or care needs. A Home-monitoring system which uses modern sensor technologies was developed for and used in these field studies. It was installed in living environments of seven people (three who were not in need of care, two in need of care, and two with mental disabilities). The data were generated by sensor data acquisition and questionnaire reporting. Four types of data analysis and representation were evaluated to support caregivers. Results show that sensor data can be used to determine information directly or indirectly, which can be mapped to relevant assessment items and presented with different degrees of granularity. It is also feasible to determine and present additional information of potential interest which cannot be directly mapped to any assessment item. Sensor data can also be displayed in a live view. This live data representation led to a decrease in the caregivers' workload when assessed according to the German version of the Perceived Stress Questionnaire.

The Lower Saxony research network design of environments for ageing: towards interdisciplinary research on information and communication technologies in ageing societies.

Worldwide, ageing societies are bringing challenges for independent living and healthcare. Health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare and sensor-enhanced health information systems offer new opportunities for care. In order to identify, implement and assess such new information and communication technologies (ICT) the 'Lower Saxony Research Network Design of Environments for Ageing' (GAL) has been launched in 2008 as interdisciplinary research project. In this publication, we inform about the goals and structure of GAL, including first outcomes, as well as to discuss the potentials and possible barriers of such highly interdisciplinary research projects in the field of health-enabling technologies for pervasive healthcare. Although GAL's high interdisciplinarity at the beginning slowed down the speed of research progress, we can now work on problems, which can hardly be solved by one or few disciplines alone. Interdisciplinary research projects on ICT in ageing societies are needed and recommended.

[Child and youth care: ambulant and non-ambulant]. / Jugendhilfe: ambulant und stationär Plädoyer für ein Kontinuum.

The enhancement of community-based, ambulant care for children with serious behavioural problems (in German: "Ambulantisierung") implies supporting them as long as possible in their own family environment. One tries to avoid an out-of-home placement. This policy, strongly underlined during the last 20 years, shows merits but also raises questions. The emphasis on ambulant care and treatment was coupled with a decline in availability and appreciation of residential childcare services. Based on a theoretical model of family support and relevant empirical findings in the field we plead in favor of a complementary role for ambulatory and non-ambulatory services; both directed at lending professional support to children and families in need of care.