ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the experience of forty women attempting to obtain support in providing care for their elderly relatives. Fourteen carers had relatives in retirement villages, hostels or nursing homes; twelve carers had elderly relatives living with them and thirteen carers had responsibility for elderly relatives who continued to live in their own homes. In relation to service provision, the women who were the most dramatically affected were those carers who lived in the same house as their elderly relatives. For the women whose elderly relatives were eligible for services, the support they found the most useful was that which could perform a kind of monitoring role. Some of the elderly relatives had gradually withdrawn from social activities, depending solely on the carer for social contact. Attempts by the carer to involve the elderly in social activities were resisted.
