Given that the majority of frail older people living at home are cared for
by family members, ensuring appropriate and sensitive support services for family
carers is a major policy priority globally. Such assessment of the needs and situation
of individual carers is a crucial first step towards ensuring that they receive flexible,
quality support services. However, existing assessment practice is still inadequate in
many countries. This paper describes a negotiated approach to carer assessment, the
Carers Outcome Agreement Tool (COAT) and briefly considers its development
with carers and practitioners in an Anglo-Swedish development project (2003
and subsequent implementation within five municipalities in Sweden (2006
A participatory research design was adopted in both projects building on the
ÄldreVäst Sjuhärad model, which is a user-focused approach to research and
development. This paper provides a short summary of the COAT development before
presenting the qualitative findings from the Swedish implementation project
(2006
and telephone follow-up interviews with carers who had a first and second COAT
assessment. The findings clearly highlight the value of COAT in enabling partnerships
to be developed between carers and practitioners, which recognise the expertise of
both parties. They also challenge providers to invest sufficient time and
–2005)–2008).–2008), which emerged from focus group interviews with COAT practitioners‘ear-marked’
resources for family care support so that COAT becomes an integral part of a
comprehensive long-term carer strategy, which feeds directly into local developments
in service delivery and organisation.