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We explored carers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in England to identify long-term impacts and implications, and to suggest future support for caregivers. Data were collected during COVID-19 rapid response studies from carers participating in a British longitudinal cohort study. Semi-structured interview data were compared to accounts from previous interviews conducted during the first 18 months of the pandemic. There was indication of some return to pre-pandemic lifestyles, but without appropriate support, carers risked reaching crisis point. Evidence points to a requirement for assessment and management of support needs to ensure well-being and sustainable dementia caregiving.
Care is activist when acts of care produce acts of citizenship: acts of breaking the dominant models of being responsible. This article has the theoretical objective of parsing how some acts of care become activist because they subvert the dominant norms of involvement and produce new ways of being mutually linked. They break established habits and social habitus, and they require new ways of acting and responding. This is what allows us to reinterpret care as a subversive practice, reshaping the political, affective and ethical boundaries. This can generate the condemnation and criminalisation of care in response.
Current societal transformations in health care and other fields of care have led to an enormous increase in the number of publications in the anthropology of care. Yet, the field turns out to be fragmented and complex. To provide some orientation, we present results of a scoping review on empirical research on paid care work in health-care settings. We structure our findings according to whether the authors tend to focus on ‘good’, ‘bad’ or ‘grey’ areas of care. Anthropology might contribute to the field of care studies by making aspects of care visible that often remain concealed otherwise.
This article critically assesses the recent European Care Strategy, the European Union’s most significant policy statement yet on long-term care. Using a framework that differentiates between economistic, social protection and configurational approaches, the European Care Strategy is adjudged to rely on an economistic approach. This sees it suggest some important measures for better services and working conditions for care workers but not enough on social protection rights and too little to disrupt the reliance on unpaid carers. Comparing the European Union approach with that of several United Nations entities – the International Labour Organization, World Health Organization and UN Women – indicates that other approaches are possible, though all need improvement.
Physical activity is beneficial for overall health; however, informal carers may have lower levels of physical activity than non-carers. The primary aim of this systematic review was to identify barriers and facilitators to physical activity from the perspective of carers internationally, excluding the UK. The study found that barriers to physical activity include lack of time, fatigue, lack of motivation and lack of support. Facilitators of physical activity include health and well-being as a motivator, using physical activity as a coping mechanism, and social support. Participating with the care recipient and care duties were both barriers and facilitators depending on the study or participant.
Migration-driven super-diversity is creating new challenges for equitable access to care in many European welfare states. To provide good care for all, care workers must bridge different kinds of social distance to build trusting relationships. Qualitative research within two home-care organisations in the same super-diverse neighbourhoods in the Netherlands reveals the strategies used by home-care workers to do so, as well as to maintain distance when their professionalism is threatened. However, the ability of care organisations and their employees to provide good relational care to all is constrained by the national standardisation of care within the welfare state.
Support coordination for people with disability and complex needs should assist in personalising and implementing individualised funded supports in a coordinated manner. Yet, this also relies on policy and organisational arrangements being conducive to good practice. Designed according to street-level policy research, this study sought to explore challenges and adaptations associated with the implementation of support coordination in Australia’s National Disability Insurance Scheme through interviews with 20 support coordinators and front-line personnel. Findings suggest that more explicit oversight of, and attention to, norms of practice and capacity to work collaboratively with choice and control are warranted to enhance support coordination.
Compared with their peers, young carers are at a higher risk of being not in education, employment or training. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, this review aims to map out the literature on young carers’ experiences of caring while attending school and their future career perceptions. The key themes that emerge from the literature include: the impact of the caring role on education and future aspirations; school awareness and multiagency support; and the positives gained from caring. Greater support in secondary school, along with multiagency collaboration, are highlighted as key influences on the likelihood of young carers maximising their career opportunities.
Patient and public involvement is a way of ensuring that research and practices are more responsive to their target groups. This study, inspired by discourse psychology, explores the knowledge contributions of informal carers who participated in group meetings to co-create a support intervention. Findings highlight that carers’ knowledge is complex, including more than practical caring experiences. Acknowledging carers’ knowledge contributions and involving a heterogeneous sample of carers are key considerations for patient and public involvement in research; otherwise, there is a danger of establishing risks of injustice. Accepting the multifaceted knowledge of carers could increase the validity of research and the relevance of interventions developed.
Data from an international survey of teachers of the Alexander Technique – an embodied form of self-care – illustrate their perspectives on how the Alexander Technique supports caring by combatting carer self-loss. Understanding of care as an embodied phenomenon is furthered by describing: (1) specific embodied habits that seem highly pertinent to care of self and others; and (2) how they might be (re)acquired in learning the Alexander Technique. In offering both practical and philosophical ways in which the Alexander Technique differs from alternatives, the article invites fresh thinking about theory and practice in supporting care, and argues that research on the Alexander Technique in the context of caring is warranted.
