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This paper aims to explore challenges and opportunities associated with young carers' employment in Australia.

Using a multi-stakeholder approach, this study captures the reflections of stakeholders (n = 8) and young carers (n = 10) about opportunities for, and experiences of, paid employment for young carers.

Despite many organisations internationally increasingly pushing diversity agendas and suggesting a commitment to equal opportunity experiences, this study found that young carers' work opportunities are often disrupted by their caring role. For young carers to be successful in their careers, organisations need to provide further workplace flexibility, and other support is required to attract and retain young carers into organisations and harness their transferrable skills for meaningful careers.

The paper highlights important implications for human resource management practitioners given the need to maximise the participation of young carers as workers, with benefits for young carers themselves, employers and society.

The research adds to the human resource management and work–family conflict literature in examining young carers through drawing on Conservation of Resources theory to highlight resources invested in caring leads to loss of educational and work experience resources. This leads to loss cycles and spirals, which can potentially continue across a lifetime, further contributing to disadvantage and lack of workplace and societal inclusion for this group of young people.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of Compass workers: a commissioned peer support model to support those caring for someone with dementia.

The paper offers a descriptive summary of how Compass workers came to be and is informed by consultations with key stakeholders and a service evaluation encompassing both quantitative and qualitative aspects.

The findings suggest that it is possible to make use of a peer support model to support those caring for someone with dementia in the context of support being provided to the cared for by statutory services. Both quantitative and qualitative data supported improvements in the quality of life for carers.

Both health and social care are facing increasing pressures. This paper offers a positive approach to addressing these pressures utilising a peer support model to support carers that may be of value to others facing similar challenges.

Social networks are seen to influence the use of health and social care services. In a secondary analysis of data from a longitudinal study of befriending of carers of people with dementia, we studied the relationship between network type and support from family/ friends, voluntary sector befriending and residential/nursing care. Using Wenger's typology of social networks, findings suggest that the pattern of support use varies by differences in the structure of networks. It is recommended that questions on social networks should be widely incorporated into carers' assessments to help identify need for social support interventions and to enable the sensitive selection of appropriate types of carer support to be provided.

A psychometrically validated measure is needed to evaluate outcomes in carers of people with mental health problems, including dementia. This study aims to develop and validate the Carer well‐being and support questionnaire (CWS).

Development and evaluation of the measure was conducted in three phases. The authors deconstructed an existing questionnaire (CUES‐C) to produce a long version measure. This was trialed with carers to reduce the number of items and a preliminary evaluation of the psychometric properties of the remaining items was undertaken. A second field test was conducted with the item‐reduced questionnaire measure to evaluate acceptability, reliability and validity.

The CWS well‐being scale shows moderate acceptability and good reliability and validity. The CWS support scale shows moderate acceptability and good reliability; validity testing for the support scale is limited by the lack of appropriate validating measures.

The CWS is a reliable, valid measure of carer well‐being and support, reflecting important aspects of carers' lives.

This paper provides researchers and practitioners with a tool that can be used to measure and address areas of support for carers. This is important in assessing the effectiveness of new interventions and approaches.

This paper presents some of the key findings from a study about supporting carers in employment. It describes the qualitative experiences of family carers for older people who are in paid employment, paying particular attention to their views on assessment and service provision. The perspectives of other key stakeholders, including staff from statutory and independent sector agencies, are also considered. Support for carers in employment is one of the five priority action areas underpinning the National Strategy for Carers (DoH, 1999). However, the findings from this study reveal that carers in employment have a limited profile at strategic level and their specific needs are rarely addressed in mainstream health and social care planning processes. The findings also suggest that assessment and care management practices are failing to support carers in relation to their employment aspirations. The effectiveness of health and social care assessments in identifying and exploring the needs of carers in employment is limited and very few separate carer assessments are completed. Carers' first‐hand experiences of service provision are described. Deficits in current services are identified and examples of good practice are highlighted. The paper concludes by outlining the implications for policy and practice. It is suggested that flexible support, underpinned by partnerships between employers and staff from statutory and independent sector agencies, is the key to supporting carers in employment.

This study aims to describe the development and approach of a theory-informed social marketing intervention that aimed to promote respite for carers of people with dementia. Despite a high need for respite, carers of people with dementia are often low users of available respite services. The reasons for this are complex, including knowledge, attitudinal, behavioural and systemic barriers. In the context of an aging population, effective strategies to support respite use by carers of people with dementia are needed.

Via formative research, the authors gained an in-depth understanding of a hard-to-reach and vulnerable group (carers of people with dementia). The resulting intervention informed, persuaded and supported carers to rethink the use of respite addressing specific barriers to service use. The intervention was evaluated using a naturalistic effects model.

Carers of people with dementia who were exposed to community-level campaign activities and also self-selected to take part in tailored coaching showed improvements to their respite knowledge, attitudes and self-efficacy. Intention to use respite and levels of personal gain from caring also increased. In contrast, carers only exposed to informational activities experienced negative changes to their respite beliefs and their sense of role captivity.

Social marketing can be used to support carer respite knowledge, attitudes and service-use behaviours in carers of people with dementia. The case study highlights an untapped role for social marketers to work in partnership with health professionals to support improvements in aged care services.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known social marketing intervention promoting the use of respite to carers of people with dementia. Findings demonstrate that tailored support services are most effective in helping carers navigate and use respite services.

There is a growing policy impetus to promote carer well-being through the provision of personalised short breaks. However, understanding of what makes for a successful personalised short break is limited. This paper aims to identify key evidence gaps and considers how these could be addressed.

A scoping review mapping the evidence base relevant to respite and short breaks for carers for older people, including those living with dementia, was completed. National and international literature published from 2000 onwards was reviewed. The scoping review focused on well-being outcomes, identified by previous research, as being important to carers.

Most studies investigating the outcomes of short breaks for carers supporting older people focus on traditional day and residential respite care. Although there have been developments in more personalised break options for carers, research exploring their impact is scarce. There is limited knowledge about how these personalised breaks might support carers to realise important outcomes, including carer health and well-being; a life alongside caring; positive caregiving relationships; choices in caring; and satisfaction in caring. Three priority lines of inquiry to shape a future research agenda are identified: understanding what matters – evidencing personalised short break needs and intended outcomes; capturing what matters – outcomes from personalised short breaks; and commissioning, delivering and scaling up personalised short breaks provision to reflect what matters.

This paper contributes to the development of an outcome-focused research agenda on personalised short breaks.