Bernard Casey will be making a presentation at the forthcoming 2nd International Conference on Evidence-based Policy in Long-Term Care. The conference will be held at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, UK from 5th to 8th September 2012. Bernard's paper will be on "The development of employment and skills in the social care sector: a comparison of Germany and Japan". The paper draws from work Bernard did for Skills for Care and Development (SfC&D). The conference programme with an abstract of the paper can be downloaded from the conference website.

IER's Dr Clare Lyonette has been named as the winner of the 2012 British Sociological Association's Sage Prize for Innovation/Excellence for her paper in the journal 'Work, Employment and Society'. The prize is awarded annually to one paper published in each of the BSA's journals, judged to represent innovation or excellence in the field.

The paper, ‘We both need to work’: maternal employment, childcare and health care in Britain and the USA, was co-authored by Gayle Kaufman and Rosemary Crompton, and was published in Work, Employment and Society 25: 34-50.

IER's Bernard Casey gave a presentation at the conference "The Cyprus Economy at a Time of European Uncertainty: Managing Reform and Sustainability", organised by the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics and held at LSE on 10-2-12. His talk on "The Fiscal Implications of Demographic Change" gave an overview of the challenges of addressing pension and care provision for Cyprus's ageing population. Other presenters at the event included the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism of the Republic of Cyprus, Prof. Chris Pissarides, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Economics, the head of sovereign debt rating for Europe, Middle East and Africa from Standard & Poor's, experts from the World Bank and the European Commission and academics from the University of Cyprus.

The contribution of family members, close relatives and friend to the provision of care services for the frail elderly has been addressed in evidence submitted by Bernard Casey to the Commission on Funding of Care and Support. Referring the interest in valuing household production, the importance of which as a component of wellbeing was stressed by the recent report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, Bernard’s paper includes calculations of the value of informal carers’ work in relation to GDP. These show that this might be as large as that attributed to the formal care sector. The paper also looks at the costs to employers consequent upon their having employees who have caring responsibilities. Click here for Bernard's paper The Value and Costs of Informal Care.