More than a visitor? Rethinking metaphors for family care in long-term care homes

Bibliographic Data

ID11202197
AuthorsJanna Klostermann (0000-0002-7376-8745, University of Calgary, corresponding author), Laura M Funk (0000-0003-0411-0410, University of Manitoba)
Year2024
Volume44
Issue9
Pages2065-2088
Publication date2024-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAgeing and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0144-686X • E-ISSN: 1469-1779
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0144686x22001271
OpenAlexW4309848431
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited66

Recent public and policy interventions aim to recognise formally the contributions of family care-givers to long-term residential care in Canada, with some arguing family carers are more than visitors and should be recognised as essential care-givers. These developments call for reconsidering how family care roles are understood and operationalised. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in three care homes in Ontario, Canada, we present an in-depth feminist rhetorical analysis of the narrated lives and work practices of 12 unpaid family carers. Specifically, we explore how unpaid family carers themselves draw on broader discursive ‘ruling metaphors’ to interpret their roles and activities ( e.g. as essential care-givers, visitors, team members), and how these metaphors invoke, organise and/or give rise to particular practices, responsibilities and relations. We contrast the stories of a family member who positioned herself as an essential care-giver and expressed a more onerous sense of individual responsibility with the stories of people who enjoyed the pleasures of visiting, who contributed as team members in ways that went beyond caring for their own relatives' care needs, and who embraced the possibilities that came with volunteering and with being able to influence change. Our analysis situates and contextualises participants' stories of their involvement and unpaid work in relation to their everyday material conditions and circumstances. We elaborate how different ways of understanding caring roles shape the nature of carers' unpaid work, as well as their options to share responsibility or set limits on that work. We also raise questions about the organisational conditions needed to help enact care as a shared collective responsibility

Care work · Ethnography · Political science · Psychological intervention · Public relations · Rhetorical question · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Unpaid work · Visitor pattern · Work (physics) · Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Healthcare Systems and Practices · Medicine · Nursing

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