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This article engages with transcript data from a larger longitudinal study of young carers’ experiences during COVID-19. We carefully engage with the transcripts of three young carers to think with the messiness of care in ways that extend beyond dyadic caregiver and care receiver categorization. Our work adopts Lonkila’s notion of ‘care-full’ research practices, which acknowledges multidirectional and complex care across the research apparatus. Pulling from multiple theoretical approaches, including feminist care ethics, critical disability studies and critical posthumanism, we follow the tendrils of care and think with the ways in which care may be affective, productive, confusing and oppressive.
Resource-limited health systems in sub-Saharan Africa struggle to provide population-wide high-quality primary healthcare, with particular concerns relating to professional workforce issues and the role of family caregivers. This qualitative study design explores the perceptions of (n = 19) health and social care professionals of the challenges they face in caring for individuals living with non-communicable diseases in Uganda. Identified challenges resulted from staffing and resource limitations, with wider issues relating to poverty and the burden placed on carers. As non-communicable diseases continue to rise, these empirical findings can inform developments in policy and service delivery in low and middle-income country contexts.
Mainstream feminist perspectives on social reproduction often portray non-disabled women as active providers of a service (care) to those assumed to be its passive, agency-less recipients. In response, this article accounts for social reproduction as a key factor in the reproduction of disabling capitalist social relations and argues for an understanding of social reproduction that no longer obscures the contributions of those considered to be ‘cared for’. Alternatives to what is termed here ‘the service model of care’ can be established through mobilising and organising for In(ter)dependent Living through an anti-productivist politics whose social relations prefigure alternatives against and beyond disabling capitalism.
Carers’ mental health is often the focus of policy and research in Global North contexts. Research exploring carers’ views often uses survey methods to collect information about their experiences and views of services and support. However, the experiences of adult carers of adults with learning disabilities have often been marginalised within these domains. Here, we report on how, working together with family carers, we disrupted survey methods and generated new insights into what matters to family carers when sharing their experiences of care, mental health, services and support, as well as the crucial role of co-production in this research.
This article examines the connections between solidarity and social esteem for unpaid care. Focusing on the moral emotions experienced by unpaid carers during the UK’s COVID-19 pandemic, the implications for the social value accorded to care are considered. Analysis focuses on 32 qualitative interviews with 25 family carers in Northern Ireland during 2020 and 2021. Conceiving of solidarity as a norm whose strength and reach can be gauged through emotional experience, the article argues that unpaid carers’ perceptions of general indifference to caregiving indicate the weakness of democratic solidarity in this neoliberal context, with significant consequences for access to social esteem.
This study expands our understanding of how existential loneliness and meaning-in-life might be connected in the lived experience of nursing home residents. A secondary analysis of interviews with nursing home residents (n = 8) was conducted. The analysis starts inductively using template analysis, and ends deductively, with a theoretical framework guiding the process. Existential loneliness and meaning-in-life are prominent in nursing home residents’ everyday lives and relate to relationships and vulnerable situations involving (1) being seen, (2) trust in life and (3) looking forward. To enhance existential well-being in nursing home residents, facilitating meaningful relationships and experiences is essential.
Eldercare practitioners face pressures to make care work more efficient as the population ages and public resources become diminished in many countries. This study focuses on how empathic care is constructed during care practitioner–client interactions. The data are derived from observing seven care practitioners’ full work shifts in public homecare. With the help of positioning theory, our analysis identifies four positive deviations where breaking out of the medical and basic care frames opens up opportunities to form an empathic relationship and treat the client not only as a patient but also as a person on their life continuum.
The significant demand for and reduction in mental health services during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in family carers providing higher levels and increased hours of support of increased complexity. Guided conversations within seven co-designed online focus groups with 73 family carers, representing diverse communities and ages, explored the experiences of and desired changes for mental health service provision. Six themes emerged: service users’ experiences; the effects of system failures and service provisions; the impact on carers’ health and well-being; unmet community needs; responsive innovations; and policy and practice recommendations. Co-producing research with families elevated family voices and supported carers in expressing their experiences, needs and rights.
Deep-seated problems facing the residential and nursing care home sector have been compounded by the impacts of the pandemic, underfunding and the cost-of-living crisis. This study aims to investigate how patterns of access to registered residential and nursing care places changed in the period spanning lockdowns and demonstrate how spatial analytical techniques can be used to examine the potential impacts of ongoing pressures on geographical patterns of access. Findings identify variations in access to provision hidden within aggregate figures that can help stakeholders monitor the current and projected availability of places as part of an overall package of care provision.
The COVID-19 pandemic imposed the suspension of many care services, and families had to choose between adhering to lockdown measures or caring for vulnerable relatives. This study revisits the Informal Care Model by explicitly incorporating the role of changing circumstances during the pandemic to understand care provision by adult children. Using nationally representative data from the UK, statistical analyses reveal that the usual suspects, such as women, were more likely to undertake additional care tasks. However, they also highlight new enabling factors for care provision that have arisen from the pandemic, such as the ability to work from home.
