We adapt the concept of the ‘consumption ensemble’ to capture the nuanced collaborations between actors in the provision and receipt of home care. Data were from a ten-year study of home care clients, family carers and workers in selected Canadian provinces. Using the lens of the ‘ensemble’, we analysed interviews with 24 dyads (carers and clients) and reviewed findings of our previously published research. Evidence of agency as collective endeavour supporting client autonomy and of improvisation in the ensemble informed a revision of our previous interactive model of care, emphasising the bidirectional nature of care relationships.
Unpaid caregivers provide valuable care that saves the Canadian healthcare system billions of dollars every year. Caregiving is highly taxing, often resulting in psychosocial impacts that are associated with negative health outcomes and decreased quality of life for caregivers. These impacts are exacerbated when public health disasters occur, such as pandemics. This article employs a socioecological approach to explore how existing risk factors at the micro, meso and macro levels negatively impacted caregivers in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use these findings to suggest policy recommendations and advocate for better support for caregivers in the event of future pandemics or other disasters.
The article elaborates what aspects of knowledge eldercare workers describe concerning everyday long-term care practices. The article utilises a thematic analysis of Finnish long-term care workers’ semi-structured interviews (n = 25), and in doing so, it contributes to the discussion concerning the epistemological basis of care. The analysis specifies four aspects of knowledge in long-term care work: objective/objectifying, particular, corporeal and tacit. In line with existing literature on knowledge and care, the findings indicate that rational-technical epistemological approaches are insufficient when complex and fluid care relations are concerned. Moreover, cognitive impairments and other particularities of eldercare provide previously under-researched epistemological perspectives for consideration.
Applying fixed-effects models using Waves 2 to 13 (2007–19) of the German Labour Market and Social Security panel study, we examine how unpaid caring changes labour supply and if monthly monetary transfers from the care recipient to the carer motivate a reduction in labour supply. We find that for both women and men, starting high-intensity caring increased the likelihood of becoming non-employed. Women were already likely to reduce working hours when starting non-intensive caring, whereas only intensive caring reduced working hours for men. Receiving low monetary transfers was a higher motivation to become non-employed for men, and receiving low monetary transfers only reduced working hours for women.
The health and social ‘after-effects’ of caring are well established, yet the way carers experience pathways out of caring remains under-researched. In this article, we analyse qualitative free-text responses (n = 1,746) from a national survey of Australian carers to explore current and former carers’ concerns, opportunities and preferences around care endings. Our thematic analysis derived three key findings: (1) anticipation and fears for the care recipient; (2) prospects for life after caring; and (3) responsibility, recognition and loss. We engage with scholarship on the moralities of caring to discuss carers’ precarious relational and social positions, and their uncertainties around how caring ends.
The needs of carers are still poorly understood in medical rehabilitation research. This article explores the lived experience of carers and the adverse effects of caring throughout the different phases of the rehabilitation care trajectory in the Netherlands, based on in-depth interviews with couples where one partner has acquired brain injury or spinal cord injury. The findings reveal that carers’ needs vary during the rehabilitation trajectory, particularly because of varying availability or lack of ‘personal time’ and ‘personal space’. Acknowledging this may improve the assistance of carers, attuned to their evolving needs, and thereby contribute to improved future rehabilitation treatment.
Caring for a child with chronic kidney disease requires parents to reorganise mundane routines and develop advanced technical skills. Parents’ strategies used to meet these challenges need greater understanding. This article takes inspiration from phenomenology of practice and material culture studies to analyse interviews with parents in Portugal. It shows that although home-based care leads to worsened social inequities, parents use the available financial and human resources to manage the situation and create normality. While they experience becoming confined and close relationships are strained, the mundane practices and social relations of care bring hope and meaning to the family.
