Patterns of Caring

Abstract

We now turn from considering the need for care to examining the primary response to such need which comes from within the informal sector and the family in particular. Considerable attention has been devoted in recent research to the issue of who cares and at what cost, but very little information exists on why they care and what factors influence the provision of informal care. These are the main unanswered questions to which this research was addressed and both here and in the following two chapters we begin to provide answers to them.