Research Article Dementia Care: Intersecting Informal Family Care and Formal Care Systems Prabhjot Singh, 1 Rafat Hussain, 2,3 Adeel Khan, 2 Lyn Irwin, 4 and Roslyn Foskey 2 1 Disability Services, Queensland Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services, Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia 2 University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia 3 School of Rural Medicine, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia 4 Aged Care Standards and Accreditation Agency Ltd., Sydney, NSW 2124, Australia Correspondence should be addressed to Rafat Hussain; rhussain@une.edu.au Received 27 October 2013; Accepted 6 January 2014; Published 20 February 2014 Academic Editor: Astrid E. Fletcher Copyright © 2014 Prabhjot Singh et al. his is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Dementia is one of the major causes of disability and dependence amongst older people and previous research has highlighted how the well-being of people with dementia is inherently connected to the quality of their relationships with their informal carers. In turn, these carers can experience signiicant levels of emotional stress and physical burden from the demands of caring for a family member with dementia, yet their uptake of formal services tends to be lower than in other conditions related to ageing. his paper is based on a qualitative study undertaken in the Australian state of Queensland and explores issues of access to and use of formal services in dementia care from the perspective of the informal family carers. It identiies three critical points at which changes in policy and practice in the formal care system could improve the capability of informal carers to continue to care for their family member with dementia: when symptoms irst become apparent and a diagnosis is sought; when the condition of the person with dementia changes resulting in a change to their support needs; and when the burden of informal care being experienced by the carer is so great that some form of transition appears to be immanent in the care arrangement. 1. Introduction Dementia as one of the major causes of disability and dependence amongst older people is an important aspect of formal service provision within aged care. Dementia is an umbrella term applied to more than one hundred degen- erative brain syndromes which include Alzheimer disease, vascular dementia, dementia with Lewy bodies, and fron- totemporal dementia [1]. hese conditions are characterised by cognitive impairment and can result in communication diiculties, loss of memory, problems in performing previous routine tasks, and personality, mood, and behavior changes [1, 2]. he well-being of people with dementia has been linked to the quality of their relationships with their informal carers [3]. In spite of research, both in Australia and elsewhere in the world, identifying the signiicant levels of strain and burden informal carers oten experience from the emotional stress and physical burden of caring for a person with dementia the uptake of formal in-home and community care services is lower among the carers of people with dementia than for other conditions associated with ageing [4, 5]. Canadian research suggests that among the explanations for the poor uptake of services is that the informal carers of people with dementia are either unaware of the services which are available or that these services are inaccessible, inconvenient, or too expensive [6]. here are also crucial diferences in power, status, and authority between the informal and formal care system that need to be considered in the intersection of the two systems [6]. he policies and practices of the formal care system are conceptualized in rational and decontextualized terms, whereas the expectations and experiences of informal family carers emerge out of a unique set of personal circumstances. his suggests a need for medical and aged care services to consider not only the impact of caring for a person with dementia on their family, but also the family’s perspective on formal services [2, 7–9]. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Aging Research Volume 2014, Article ID 486521, 9 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/486521