The present article explores professional attitudes to family members supporting an older person newly diagnosed with dementia. It draws on professional perspectives derived from a series of 24 multidisciplinary workshops held in the UK, analysed using a typology developed by Twigg in 1989. The primary care workers' understanding of carers' needs and circumstances fitted best with Twigg's models of carers as resources and co-workers, but showed limited awareness of carers' responses and attitudes to caring. It is argued that professional assumptions about family members' roles when dementia is recently recognised among older people expand definitions of carers, but still confirm their instrumental role.