Textbooks, monographs and policy-focused books on our Health and Social Care list push forward the boundaries of teaching, theory, policy and practice. The list covers areas including global health, health inequalities and research into policy and practice.
Key series include Transforming Care which provides a crucial platform for scholars researching early childhood care, care for adults with disabilities and long-term care for frail older people, and the Sociology of Health Professions, offering high-quality, original work in the sociology of health professions with an innovative focus on their likely future direction. Our leading journal in the area is the International Journal of Care and Caring.
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This article discusses the overlooked role of recreation programmes in the ethnocultural and cultural-specific long-term care home from my standpoint as a recreation worker. First, the policy during the pandemic that prohibited visits by family members and volunteers revealed that they are important informal caregivers to fill in for the limitations of workers. Second, recreational programmes can also be considered as a practice of cultural inheritance: staff and volunteers learn their history and reconstruct them as collective memory. Third, the interaction between residents, volunteers, families and workers generates a sense of belonging to the ethnic community. Therefore, it can be considered a practice of community building for minority ethnic groups. By presenting the significant role of recreation workers in a long-term care home, I aim to question the meaning and value of care work in long-term care facilities.
The United Nations Decade of Healthy Ageing (2020–30) states that reliance on family care alone is unsustainable. This scoping review synthesises knowledge on family beliefs about care for older people in Central, East, Southern and West Africa and Latin America. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines were followed, and 35 articles published from 2010 to 2020 were included. The review highlights the challenges arising from embedded beliefs in family obligations to care.
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.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore stark gendered care inequalities and the inadequacy of care provision across states. This article presents a feminist-ethics-of-care-informed discourse analysis of the representation of care that emerged at the Irish Citizens’ Assembly on Gender Equality – an innovative government-created citizen deliberation process. It identifies how care was represented as a ‘problem’ of both gender inequality and the market, and uncovers key silences, which ignored care as a universal need of all citizens and the significance of care networks to sustaining caring. We propose the necessity of ethics-of-care-based understandings to address post-pandemic care challenges.
An adaptation of the stress and coping model applicable to Asian family carers of persons living with dementia is proposed based on quantitative and qualitative studies in this population. Key features of this adapted model include: (1) specifying person and environment factors for the particular context of Asian family carers of a person living with dementia; (2) highlighting the importance of perceived social support; (3) describing a broader influence of culture on several aspects of the appraisal and coping process; (4) differentiating between positive and negative emotion-focused coping strategies; and (5) emphasising quality of life as an outcome of coping.
In response to COVID-19, many care homes closed to visitors and new ways for carers and residents to stay in touch were tried. This UK study employed an online survey to explore carer experiences of staying in touch from a distance. The research highlighted: the importance of ongoing connections (through visits and remotely); diverse approaches to maintaining contact; and concerns about safeguarding and well-being. Findings underscore the importance of developing personalised approaches to staying in touch during future care home closures and for those who require an ongoing approach to remote contact due to distance, illness or additional caring responsibilities.
‘Shielding’ and ‘isolating’ were the strictest forms of staying home. Four million people who were particularly vulnerable were asked to ‘shield’ at home for months, initially to protect the health service and latterly for their own protection. At least 12 million who had COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 were required by law to ‘isolate’ at home to protect others (at least those outside their household). A quarter of shielders and isolators lived alone and became a new category of dependent people. Those who lived with others had to try to avoid infection at home. People on lower incomes were more likely to have to shield or isolate, but they and ethnic minorities were less likely to have a spare bedroom to do so properly, which must have contributed to inequalities in infection and death. Shielding and isolating were only partially successful.
In 2020/21, there were 28 million or 18% fewer hospital appointments than before the pandemic. Millions were providing healthcare for household members with COVID, while trying to avoid infection, or conditions that would normally be treated in hospital. Some 34% more people than usual died at home. This placed extra responsibility on sick and vulnerable people, their households and homes.
This chapter introduces the book. Everyone on earth has views about the COVID-19 pandemic. It was unprecedented and multi-dimensional. It has been seen as a test of resilience, as casting a spotlight on inequality, and potentially as a turning point for policy and society.
The most important policy used to control COVID-19 infection in the UK – and all around the world – was ‘lockdown’, requiring large proportions of the population to stay home. This resulted in mass changes in the way in which homes were used, experienced and paid for, with their own knock-on inequalities. When the pandemic hit, many felt that the UK housing system was in ‘crisis’, but suddenly the unsatisfactory system became the official national refuge. The pandemic provided an unfortunate natural opportunity to learn about the UK housing system under unique pressure: its flaws, its inequalities and its resilience. This book uses a wide range of special surveys carried out in 2020–21, including studies of people aged 19, 31, 50, 62 and 74 in 2020 when the pandemic began, to analyse its impact on people, households, homes and the housing system in the UK.
The COVID-19 pandemic shut down or disrupted large parts of the UK labour market. By May 2020, almost half of the population had lost at least 10% of their income.
Most people turned first to their savings and to friends and family, but in March 2020, the UK government invented new jobs support, benefits and housing policies, which were relatively generous compared to the pandemic policy in other countries and to the normal welfare safety net. A total of 12 million UK people were ‘furloughed’ on 80% of pay for some months at a cost of £70 billion. Universal Credit claims increased by 1.1 million or 39%. At least two million mortgagees took a payment ‘holiday’. A moratorium meant an almost complete halt to legal evictions and repossessions until at least 2022. Overall, median income fell and partly as a result, relative poverty reduced slightly. However, some people experienced stable incomes, reduced costs and increased savings, while others lost income, spent savings and borrowed. Three million people lost income but were ineligible for schemes. Job and income loss affected renters and outright owners more. Mortgagees and private renters experienced worsening affordability and increasing arrears. Renters had no ‘holiday’ scheme. There will be lingering and unequal effects on savings, debts, housing security and ability to buy.
