This paper builds on the idea that any further development of the concept of 'welfare regime' must incorporate the relationship between unpaid as well as paid work and welfare. Consideration of the privateldomestic is crucial to a gendered understanding of welfare because historically women have typically gained entitlements by virtue of their dependent status within the family as wives and mothers. The paper suggests that the idea of the male-breadwinner family model has served historically to cut across established typologies of welfare regimes, and further that the model has been modified in different ways and to different degrees in particular countries.

This paper reports the first application of the capabilities approach to the development and valuation of an instrument for use in the economic evaluation of health and social care interventions. The ICECAP index of capability for older people focuses on quality of life rather than health or other influences on quality of life, and is intended to be used in decision making across health and social care in the UK. The measure draws on previous qualitative work in which five conceptual attributes were developed: attachment, security, role, enjoyment and control. This paper details the innovative use within health economics of further iterative qualitative work in the UK among 19 informants to refine lay terminology for each of the attributes and levels of attributes used in the eventual index. For the first time within quality of life measurement for economic evaluation, a best-worst scaling exercise has been used to estimate general population values (albeit for the population of those aged 65+ years) for the levels of attributes, with values anchored at one for full capability and zero for no capability. Death was assumed to be a state in which there is no capability. The values obtained indicate that attachment is the attribute with greatest impact but all attributes contribute to the total estimation of capability. Values that were estimated are feasible for use in practical applications of the index to measure the impact of health and social care interventions.

BIBLID [2340-4396 (2015) 71, 83-101] Fecha de recepción: 21 de julio del 2014 Fecha de aceptación y versión final: 15 de octubre del 2015 RESUMEN: Se investiga la situación sociocultural de los cuidados informales a personas mayores dependientes en Chile. El estudio empírico cualitativo fue realizado en la Región Metropolitana de Santiago de Chile, con cuidadores informales de personas mayores con dependencias, de estratos socioeconómicos bajos y medios-bajos. Los principales resultados indican que los cuidados en Chile eran responsabilidad exclusiva de las familias -mujeres-con un Estado desempeñan-do un rol subsidiario.Palabras clave: cuidadores; discapacitado; vejez; política social.ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was to investigate the sociocultural situation of the informal care given to old aged dependents in Chile. This empiric qualitative study was performed in the Santiago de Chile Metropolitan Area, with informal caregivers of old aged people with dependencies, from the low and mid-low socioeconomic level. The main findings point out that care giving was a duty of the families -the women-with the Chilean state playing a subsidiary role.

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This article explores how parents in couple families reconcile employment and child-care, and how far the current emphasis of EU-level policy on enhancing the formal provision of child-care fits with patterns and/or preferences in Western European member states. We use European Social Survey data from 2004-05 on working patterns and preferences, and on child-care use and preferences regarding the amount of formal provision. We find that working hours remain a very important dimension of work/family reconciliation practices, with large differences in both patterns and preferences. There is very little evidence of convergence towards a dual, full-time worker model family outside the Nordic countries, although the balance between the hours which men and women spend in paid work is becoming less unequal. The part that kin (partners and grandparents) play in providing child-care remains important in all but three countries, and, for the most part, mothers report that they are content with the amount of formal child-care available. We suggest that work/family reconciliation measures need to encompass a more extended policy package, the components of which are likely to be specific to member states.

Background Footwear and offloading techniques are commonly used in clinical practice for preventing and healing of foot ulcers in persons with diabetes. The goal of this systematic review is to assess the medical scientific literature on this topic to better inform clinical practice about effective treatment.

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