Caring in space

The boundaries between public and private spaces in Finnish adult foster care homes

Datos Bibliográficos

ID11202176
AutoresEmilia Leinonen (0000-0001-6572-9060, University of Jyväskylä, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen41
Número5
Páginas1184-1201
Fecha de publicación2021-05-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAgeing and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0144-686X • E-ISSN: 1469-1779
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0144686x19001831
OpenAlexW3000472142
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas35

The purpose of this article is to explore a hybrid community-based form of care for older people called adult foster care. In the article, the nature of the foster care home as a place of care is explored from the foster carers’ point-of-view. It is based on an interview study of 12 foster carers. In this article, the theoretical frameworks from human geography and work–family research are combined in order to analyse the boundaries between private family-life and public work-life in the particular space of the foster care home. The research questions are: What kinds of public and private spaces exist in adult foster care homes? What kinds of boundaries separate (a) the public and private spaces and (b) the foster care home and the outside world? The findings suggest that foster care homes are very complex socio-spatial places of care, in which the questions of power (who can do what and when in a certain space), the re-organisation of home, and the division of private and public spaces all contest the idea of home as a mere ‘safe haven’ from the pressures of work life. Different boundaries and boundary management strategies enabled the foster carers to regard their place of living and working as their home, even though it had altered to a place of care of ‘strangers’

Boundary (topology) · Business · Care work · CONTEST · Foster care · Order (exchange) · Political science · Power (physics) · Private space · Public relations · Public space · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Work (physics) · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Law · Medicine · Migration, Aging, and Tourism Studies · Nursing