Caring in mind? Professionals’ awareness of young carers and young adult carers in Switzerland

Findings from international research emphasis the need of these young people to be identified and recognised. Therefore, a nationwide quantitative study of professionals' awareness was conducted in the Swiss context. Data were collected from professionals working in education, healthcare and social services. The study examined professionals’ familiarity with the terms used to describe young people with caring responsibilities; their ability to identify the population in their professional context; their perception of the relevance of the issue; their ability to support them; and their own training needs. Potential study participants were contacted via email. Data were collected using an online survey, which was open for 14 weeks during the period of September to December 2016. Survey data from 2,311 professionals, who reported being regularly in contact with young people with caring responsibilities in their occupational context, were included for analysis. Of all terms presented in the survey, young carer (YC) was the term most familiar to all professionals. Among healthcare and education sector, the percentage of professionals familiar with this term was higher than that among professionals from social services. Professionals from social services were the most likely to consider the issue relevant to their work, those from education were the least likely. Professionals who were familiar with the terms describing YC were more likely to consider the issue relevant to their work. Study results showed that more than half of the respondents had not identified young people with caring responsibilities, and that the ability of participants to identify YC was related to their occupational sector. The perceived ability to support YC was related to their reported ability to recognise them. In order to enable professionals to support YC, raising awareness, providing training for professionals and a national network of existing organisations should be well considered

No evidence of overweight in long-term survivors of childhood cancer after glucocorticoid treatment.

Glucocorticoids can lead to weight gain during cancer treatment, but to the authors' knowledge, little is known regarding their long-term effects in childhood cancer survivors (CCS). As part of the Swiss Childhood Cancer Survivor Study, the authors sent a questionnaire to CCS aged <21 years at diagnosis who were residing in Switzerland, had survived ≥5 years, and were aged 15 to 45 years at the time of the survey. Cumulative doses of glucocorticoids were assessed from medical records and study protocols and body mass index was calculated from self-reported height and weight at the time of the survey. The authors compared the prevalence of overweight between CCS, their siblings, and the general population (Swiss Health Survey [SHS]) and investigated the association between overweight and treatment-related risk factors using multivariable logistic regression. The study included 1936 CCS, 546 siblings, and 9591 SHS participants. The median age of the CCS at the time of the survey was 24 years (interquartile range, 20-31 years) and the median time since diagnosis was 17 years (interquartile range, 12-22 years). At the time of the survey, approximately 26% of CCS were overweight, a percentage that was comparable to that among siblings (24%) and the SHS participants (25%). The prevalence of overweight was 24% in CCS treated with glucocorticoids only (686 CCS), 37% in those treated with cranial radiotherapy (CRT) (127 CCS), and 49% in those who received treatment with both glucocorticoids and CRT (101 CCS) (P < .001). The authors found no evidence of a dose-response relationship between cumulative glucocorticoid doses and overweight and no evidence that CRT modified the effect of the cumulative glucocorticoid dose on overweight. The results of the current study suggest that glucocorticoids used for the treatment of childhood cancer are not associated with long-term risk of overweight