| 179 7 Introduction Dementia affects a person’s ability to perform activities of daily living and as a result, burdens those family members or friends who take on caring responsibilities and provide long-term informal care (1-3). The number of hours of care provided by informal caregivers worldwide was equivalent to 40 million full-time jobs in 2015 and is expected to increase to 65 million full-time jobs by 2030 (4). The number of hours of informal care and subjective burden are associated with greater unmet care needs of informal caregivers (5). About 30% of informal caregivers experience depression and almost 50% are (over) burdened (6). Providing care for someone with dementia can negatively impact informal caregivers’ quality of life and mental health (7, 8). The presence of behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia has been associated with increased carer burden (9). This affects not only the caregiver but also negatively impacts the person living with dementia and may lead to early admission to residential care (10, 11). With the growing pressure on informal caregivers to provide care for their loved ones, there is a focus on care and support options to assist informal caregivers (12). Psycho-social and e-health interventions seem promising to assist informal caregivers (13-16). However, there is a gap between the research and development of these interventions and their actual implementation in practice (17). It has also been suggested that providing support to a person living with dementia might positively impact caregiver wellbeing and decrease their burden (18, 19). Social care includes a range of supports, such as day centres, homecare (domiciliary) services, and residential living options. In the United Kingdom (UK), people living with dementia can be supported by the social care system to live independently at home for as long as possible (although this is dependent on financial means). However, social care workers are not always optimally trained in dementia (20, 21). To illustrate, homecare workers support people of different ages and with different conditions, and thus they might lack sufficient dementia-specific knowledge (22). Due to the complex nature of dementia, they can struggle to tailor support to meet the needs of and build trusting relationships with the person living with dementia (23). There is mixed evidence on the impact that social care services may have on carer burden. It has been suggested that social care services may decrease
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