OBJECTIVE: Parental cancer brings changes and challenges which affect the whole family. Evidence shows heightened psychosocial risk among the offspring. Research among adolescents and young adults (AYAs) facing parental cancer has mainly focused on these psychosocial problems. As a reaction, there has been an increase in research on the needs of this population, since this knowledge is crucial for developing appropriate support. Despite this increase, some AYAs are still underrepresented, namely those over eighteen years old and those who have a parent with incurable cancer. Moreover, the factors hampering or fostering access to and receipt of support addressing their needs are under-investigated. Increasing our understanding of these issues is crucial to developing more effective support interventions for these young people. Our aim was therefore to gain insight into the perceived support needs of AYAs who have a parent with cancer, including the mentioned underrepresented subgroups, and the perceived factors facilitating or hindering their use of support.
METHODS: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 17 AYAs who have a parent with cancer of any type and stage, which were analyzed using conventional Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA).
RESULTS: Six main categories emerged from the data, encompassing various subcategories: 1) Needs surrounding the time of disclosure, 2) Information needs, 3) Informal support needs, 4) Need for effective personal coping strategies, 5) Formal support needs, and 6) Contextual and medical factors affecting support needs. AYAs perceived family members, friends and teachers as important sources of informal support, but lacked contact with peers who also have a parent with cancer. They expressed a need for formal informational and emotional support from their parent\'s medical team, (onco)psychologists, and their general practitioner. AYAs faced barriers in accessing formal support. A proactive attitude from healthcare providers and information about available support would help them meet their needs. Furthermore, we shed new light on needs and issues in post-secondary education.
CONCLUSIONS: AYAs who are living with their parent with cancer experience informational, emotional, and practical needs in multiple contexts, such as the home, school, leisure and hospital environment. They identify their informal and formal network as important key figures in addressing these needs.

BACKGROUND: Informal care for people with dementia not only affects the well-being of the primary caregiver but also changes their roles and interactions with the social environment. New online interventions might facilitate access to social support. Recently, an online social support platform, Inlife, was developed in the Netherlands and aims to enhance social support and positive interactions in informal support networks.
OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Inlife for caregivers of people with dementia.
METHODS: A randomized controlled trial with 96 caregivers of people with dementia was performed. Participants were randomly assigned to the Inlife intervention or the waiting list control group. After 16 weeks of Inlife use, the waiting list control group could start using Inlife. Effects were evaluated at baseline (T0), 8 weeks (T1), and 16 weeks (T2). The 16-week follow-up assessment (T2) served as the primary endpoint to evaluate the results for the primary and secondary outcome variables evaluated with online self-report questionnaires. The primary outcomes included feelings of caregiver competence and perceived social support. The secondary outcomes included received support, feelings of loneliness, psychological complaints (eg, anxiety, stress), and quality of life.
RESULTS: No significant improvements were demonstrated for the intervention group (n=48) relative to the control group (n=48) for the primary outcomes (feeling of carer competence: b=-0.057, 95% CI -0.715 to 0.602, P=.87; perceived social support: b=-15.877, 95% CI -78.284 to 46.530, P=.62) or any secondary outcome. This contrasts with our qualitative findings showing the potential of Inlife to facilitate the care process in daily life. Adherence was not optimal for all Inlife users. Additional per-protocol and sensitivity analyses also revealed no beneficial results for high active Inlife users or specific subgroups. Inlife users were more active when part of a larger network.
CONCLUSIONS: Researchers should be modest regarding the effectiveness of online caregiver interventions in terms of quantitative measures of well-being and quality of life. Nevertheless, online tools have the potential to facilitate the caregiver process in daily life. Lessons learned include the importance of harnessing the power of human interaction in eHealth, making use of the user\'s social capital, and the need to develop research methods that can identify benefits in daily life that are ecologically valid for caregivers.
BACKGROUND: Netherlands Trial Register NTR6131; https://trialsearch.who.int/Trial2.aspx?TrialID=NTR6131.
UNASSIGNED: RR2-10.1186/s13063-017-2097-y.

In Latin America, informal support from adult children to their older parents (\"upward support\") is crucial with an aging population and insufficient coverage of social protection systems. This article examines variables associated with upward support, distinguishing by gender of parents and their children. The research design is quantitative, correlational, and cross-sectional. It is based on primary survey data collected by the authors for the study. The authors hypothesized that upward support depends on children\'s opportunities to provide support and on the needs of parents. The results show that upward support depends more on children\'s opportunities than on parents\' needs, although upward support is higher for parents with poorer health. Daughters are more supportive than sons, but sibling characteristics do not moderate associations between children\'s gender and receipt of support. Cohabiting with the parent, receiving support from the parent, and having a good relationship were also associated with greater upward support. Therefore, policies should consider the gender of adult children when allocating resources to older people.

Young women who experience intimate partner violence (IPV) are most likely to turn to their friends for help. Although friends can play a critical role in providing support, there is little research that examines friends\' experiences. In this qualitative study, we explored how friends of young women experiencing IPV perceived their role in responding to IPV in the context of friendship. We held in-depth interviews with 15 friends of young women who had experienced IPV and used reflexive thematic analysis to develop key themes from the data. We developed two overarching themes that reflected participants\' perceptions of the roles they had played or considered as a friend in responding to IPV: \"taking action\" (which included \"providing an outsider\'s view,\" \"being an advisor or coach,\" \"being a protector,\" and \"taking a stand\"); and \"being there\" (which included \"being a listener,\" \"being a companion\" and \"being an ally\"). Their perceptions were shaped by friendship expectations, as well as by understandings of IPV. However, deciding what role to play in supporting their friend was constructed as challenging due to conflicting expectations that arose in the context of friendship. It involved balancing a perceived responsibility to do what they thought was best for their friend\'s well-being, a need to promote honesty and mutuality in the friendship, along with a competing obligation to respect their friend\'s choices, maintain her trust and ensure equality in the friendship. Being friends with the abuser as well as with the victim created additional complexities. Based on our findings, we identify key areas to address in developing interventions to assist friends to respond to young women experiencing IPV. These could guide friends on how to play an effective support role while also maintaining the friendship and managing the significant emotional impacts of providing help.

UNASSIGNED: The generation of people getting older has become a public health concern worldwide. People aged 65 and above are the most at risk for Alzheimer\'s disease which is associated with physical and behavioral changes. This nurtures informal support needs for people living with dementia where their families together with other community members are the core providers of day to day care for them in the rural setting. Despite global concern around this issue, information is still lacking on informal support delivered to these people with dementia.
UNASSIGNED: Our study aimed at establishing the nature of informal support provided for people with dementia (PWDs) and its perceived usefulness in rural communities in South Western Uganda.
UNASSIGNED: This was a qualitative study that adopted a descriptive design and conducted among 22 caregivers and 8 opinion leaders in rural communities of Kabale, Mbarara and Ibanda districts in South Western Uganda. The study included dementia caregivers who had been in that role for a period of at least 6 months and opinion leaders in the community. We excluded trained health workers.
UNASSIGNED: The study highlights important forms of informal support offered to PWDs such as support in activities of daily living, enabling access to medical attention, recovering misplaced items, provision of herbal remedy, informal counseling, and sourcing carers from other families to offer presence and support in the hope to impact positively on behavioral outbursts and the frustration of living with dementia.
UNASSIGNED: The study revealed various forms of informal support that are available for PWDs in South Western Uganda and stressed the role of caregivers and the perceived usefulness of the care provided.

BACKGROUND: Informal support is essential for enabling many older people to age in place. However, there is limited research examining the information needs of older adults\' informal support networks and how these could be met through home monitoring and information and communication technologies.
OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate how technologies that connect older adults to their informal and formal support networks could assist aging in place and enhance older adults\' health and well-being.
METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 10 older adults and a total of 31 members of their self-identified informal support networks. They were asked questions about their information needs and how technology could support the older adults to age in place. The interviews were transcribed and thematically analyzed.
RESULTS: The analysis identified three overarching themes: (1) the social enablers theme, which outlined how timing, informal support networks, and safety concerns assist the older adults\' uptake of technology, (2) the technology concerns theme, which outlined concerns about cost, usability, information security and privacy, and technology superseding face-to-face contact, and (3) the information desired theme, which outlined what information should be collected and transferred and who should make decisions about this.
CONCLUSIONS: Older adults and their informal support networks may be receptive to technology that monitors older adults within the home if it enables aging in place for longer. However, cost, privacy, security, and usability barriers would need to be considered and the system should be individualizable to older adults\' changing needs. The user requirements identified from this study and described in this paper have informed the development of a technology that is currently being prototyped.

BACKGROUND: Different kinds of chronic diseases might imply different dimensions of caregiver burden, not previously described among the caregivers to recipients from the general elder population.
OBJECTIVE: The main objective was to examine differences in burden between the 343 caregivers to persons with different diagnoses.
METHODS: A group of elderly recipients of informal care (n = 343) from the general population study \'Good Aging in Skåne\' (GÅS) Sweden, were divided into five diagnostic groups: dementia (n = 90), heart and lung diseases (n = 48), stroke (n = 62), fractures (n = 66), depression (n = 40) and the group \"other\", consisting of different diagnoses (n = 37) according to ICD-10. Differences in burden were analyzed using the Caregiver Burden Scale (CBS), a 22-item scale consisting of five dimensions: general strain, isolation, disappointment, emotional involvement and environmental burden. A total burden index comprises the mean of all the 22 items and a higher score indicates a higher burden.
RESULTS: The most common diagnosis associated to caregiving was dementia and fracture and the median hours weekly for informal support with instrumental ADL for the five diagnostic groups ranged from 7 to 45 h for spouses and from 4 to 7 h for parents. The highest proportion of caregivers scoring high total burden was seen among recipients with dementia (50%) and depression (38%); the OR for high total burden for the dementia group was 4.26 (2.29-7.92) and depression group 2.38 (1.08-5.24) adjusted for covariates like age, gender and ADL and these two groups had higher self-perception of burden in all the dimensions, especially the dimension\'s emotional burden and strain.
CONCLUSIONS: Informal support constitutes a substantial time for instrumental ADL for the diseased elders. Caregivers to persons with dementia and depression experience high burden.

Marital disruption (i.e. due to death, divorce or separation) at older ages is an important issue as it removes the usual primary source of help and support: a husband or wife. To date, few studies have investigated the support implications (both informal, here defined as perceived support and social embeddedness and formal, defined as use of domiciliary care services) of marital disruptions in later life. This issue needs addressing as widow(er)hood and divorce are increasingly occurring at older ages. Employing data from the longitudinal British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) (1991-2003) we investigated the association between marital disruption and first loss of (a) perceived support and (b) at least weekly contact with at least one non-relative friend, among those aged 50 and over. We also examined first use of domiciliary care services (i.e. health visitor or district nurse, home help or meals-on-wheels) among those aged 70 and over. Our findings show that marital separation increased the odds of losing perceived support whereas widow(er)hood showed no significant association among people aged 50 and over. Separation and widow(er)hood increased the odds of losing weekly contact with non-relative friends (although the odds were greater for separation) in this age group. Finally, widow(er)hood increased the odds of using domiciliary care services among respondents aged 70 and over.

This paper provides a detailed picture of the sources and types of informal support available to centenarians, depending on their housing and care arrangements. Participants were 112 centenarians and 96 primary contacts of centenarians enrolled in the population-based Second Heidelberg Centenarian Study. Findings indicate that children of centenarians were their primary source of support in daily life. Those without living children had overall less help. Most frequently reported was help with administrative tasks, regardless of centenarians\' residence or living arrangement. All other types of help (e.g., with activities of daily living and housework) were reported by about one-third and were mostly provided by children; centenarians without children were more likely to have friends/neighbors involved in some of these tasks. The one category reported by a third of the centenarians regardless of residence, living arrangements, or presence of a child was help with socializing/companionship. Findings constitute an important step toward identifying and meeting the support needs of centenarians and their families. Policy implications are discussed.

Much of the research on military families has focused on active duty service members. Little is known about informal and formal supports that National Guard service members use. Using an ecological systems perspective, this exploratory pilot study assessed awareness, access, use, satisfaction, and perceptions of effectiveness of informal and formal supports in a small group of National Guard service members. Results indicate that although service members are aware of many formal and informal supports, use of many of the supports is limited. Additionally, satisfaction and perceptions of effectiveness of many supports is neutral. The implications of these results are discussed.