Review of respite services and short-term breaks for carers of people with dementia

A review of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of respite care and short breaks for carers for people with dementia. The review builds on an earlier scoping study, also for SDO, mapping out the literature relating to support for carers for people with mental health problems (the three reports and briefing paper for this work can be downloaded at www.sdo.lshtm.ac.uk/mentalhealthcarers.htm). Key aims of the new respite study for dementia carers include: - Identifying the full range of respite services for carers for people with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia - Examining the evidence from published and grey literature (both national and international) about effective and cost-effective respite services for this group - Identifying examples of good practice of respite care and short breaks in health and social services, as well as the voluntary and independent sectors, for carers for people with dementia - Advising the SDO which areas should be a priority for further research, having identified key gaps in the evidence base A comprehensive literature review of research evidence will be conducted, the review will consider evidence from a wide range of sources, and will take a broad view of how effectiveness is conceptualised.