Surviving Family Care Giving

Surviving Family Care Giving: Co-ordinating effective care through collaborative communication is a practical book for family and other home carers in a variety of situations. Grainne Smith shows how to provide the most effective coordinated care possible through constructive communication and collaborative care, to support individuals who have long term physical and mental health problems, including conditions from Alzheimers to alchoholism, autism to anorexia, schizophrenia to multiple sclerosis. Written from personal experience as a family carer, Grainne Smith includes interviews with other carers and service users; and draws on years of working with children and their families in tough times. Chapters such as Challenging Behaviour, Confidentiality, and Motivation illustrate some of the many problems facing carers who support vulnerable individuals. Problems include isolation, feelings of helplessness and uncertainty about what best to do, what to try to avoid and the lack of much needed relevant information and resources to support care-giving.Surviving Family Care Giving vividly illustrates the daily difficulties experienced by care givers who offer long term care and support - and shows how to work through them. It provides suggestions on ways to build both constructive collaborative care and good family teamwork through effective communication, and how to ensure continuing care and support for the person at the centre of all the efforts. This book will be essential reading for family and other carers, including professionals trying to create ongoing continuity of care for their patients outside of treatment and education centres.

Grainne Smith is an author, writing from her considerable professional experience as a former teacher and primary head teacher working with children and families during tough times and easy, as well as her personal experience as a single family carer when her daughter was in a life-threatening condition with anorexia and her mother developed Alzheimer's.

"Having a loved one with a chronic illnesses requiring intensive in-home care can tear families apart. To focus on keeping family members connected and working together as a team, this book transcends trendy illness-specific how-to guides regarding caring for a family member, by detailing cross-cutting care issues clearly and succinctly. Based on decades of personal and professional experience, as well as the support of scientific evidence, the concept of collaborative communication comes to life as practical, useful advice that provides both hope and comfort". - Richard E. Kreipe, MD, FAAP, FSAHM, FAED, Elizabeth R. McAnarney Professor of Pediatrics, University of Rochester "The book uses real-life examples from families coping with various conditions and ideas that can be adapted to fit the reader's own situation. It focuses on what carers can do to help themselves through telephone helplines, charities, self-help groups, relaxation therapies and more. It is, in short, a survival guide." - Andrew Cozens, Chair of Carers Trust "Grainne Smith uses her first hand experience of caring for a family member recovering from an eating disorder, combined with her professional training, experience and work over many years with children and young people, to open an accessible and informative discourse which will be a useful source of information and advice for families and caring professionals alike. Grainne explores this topic with compassion, warmth and humour, aimed at building constructive and mutually supportive relationships in challenging circumstances which support the best outcomes for those experiencing illness or disability and their families. This is a valuable contribution to the literature on co-production and should be on every health and social care student's reading list."- Janice Reavell, Social Work Team Manager, Adult Mental Health, Aberdeenshire "In my 35 years as an NHS Manager, I have yet to meet another carer who has brought such energy to the matter of carers and their needs in supporting their loved ones through life-affecting and life-threatening illness. Grainne is a vibrant story-teller as well as an author, teacher, parent and carer. This book tells some good stories, carefully crafted, providing nourishment to parents, carers and most definitely to clinicians and social work professionals." - Bill Cowling, NHS Service Manager (retired) "Giving families the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to help a loved one who needs treatment or long term care is vital. At Beat, we speak daily to families who don't know which way to turn, or what to do for the best- so overwhelming is the challenge of providing care. In this book, Grainne Smith shares hard won personal experience and good common sense."- Susan Ringwood, FAED, Chief Executive, Beat "We may think that we are drowning in communication with tweets and blogs etc: however, in our day-to-day life, listening to and understanding another person's perspective is not given the high importance that it needs. This book will help with this neglected area, offering much help to family care givers supporting people with all sorts of difficult conditions." - Professor Janet Treasure OBE PhD FRCP FRCPsych, Professor Psychiatry Kings College London "Surviving Family Care Giving' is one of those books that come along rarely - books that should completely change how practitioners work. We know carers often struggle. We know sometimes support offered is inadequate. Yet we work in separate silos. Grainne Smith has done a great service to users, carers and practitioners in this insightful and challenging book. Read it - it will change what you do!"- Dr Chris Williams, Professor of Psychosocial Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow and lead author of the popular www.llttf.com website "Caring for someone with a chronic health condition can be an extremely isolating and difficult experience. This book reaches out to those carers. It is solidly grounded in the author's personal lived experience of being a carer and her intimate knowledge of the key difficulties ca