This paper examines extracts from a daughter’s blog about her father’s time in a care home in the north of England from June 2015 until his death in January 2016. Through these extracts, the author of the paper, who is also the daughter of the title, provokes key ethical issues concerning the identity, agency and voice of an elder in the context of residential care. The wider, rapidly deteriorating, political and economic climate for the care of older people is briefly (...) discussed and the paper makes reference to a feminist ethics of care, in order to both critique and celebrate women’s central place in caring for elders. The paper explores how the ethnographic process of writing about care for another can be considered a route to ethical care practice and it suggests that this blog is part of an autoethnographic analytic tradition [Anderson 2006. “Analytic Autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35 (4): 373–395]. Finally, the paper asks questions about the ethics of blogging about and on behalf of an elder that, in this case, played a significant role in bringing not only the daughter-author but also other family members closer to the life of their father, grandfather and great-grandfather. (shrink)

The ethic of care provides not only a basis for understanding relationships of care at the micro level but also a potent form of political ethics, relevant to the development of welfare services. Williams (2001), for example, argues that the concept of care has the capacity to be a central referent in social policy?a point at which social and cultural transformations meet with the changing relations of welfare (Williams 2001, p. 470). English social care services are currently in another period (...) of change precipitated by the ?personalisation agenda?. This agenda is seen as having the potential to revolutionise social care, to create the conditions needed to tailor services to individual needs, and to give service users greater choice and control, including, where possible, control over their own service budgets or direct possession and management of care funds. These developments are inextricably linked to broader economic and social trends, key amongst which are the ageing of the population and changing economic conditions affecting both the labour market and the market for care services. This article applies the feminist ethic of care to an analysis of the personalisation agenda in the context of care for dependent older people. It highlights fundamental political questions posed concerning the nature and extent of older people's need for care, responsibility for meeting these needs and the associated costs. It questions whether the personalisation agenda could potentially offer a more responsive form of care, by placing more power and control in older people's hands. Key points considered are the individualisation of care and the ways in which control is conceptualised. The article concludes with an assessment of the feminist ethic of care as a basis for policy evaluation. (shrink)

How do we know which institutions provide good care? Some scholars argue that the best way to think about care institutions is to model them upon the family or the market. This paper argues, on the contrary, that when we make explicit some background conditions of good family care, we can apply what we know to better institutionalized caring. After considering elements of bad and good care, from an institutional perspective, the paper argues that good care in an institutional context (...) has three central foci: the purpose of care, a recognition of power relations, and the need for pluralistic, particular tailoring of care to meet individuals? needs. These elements further require political space within institutions to address such concerns. (shrink)

Developments in the provision of care and support services for disabled and older people across developed welfare states have led to the expansion of personalisation (sometimes called cash-for-care, direct payments, care payments, etc.) schemes, whereby cash is paid in substitute for care services and support. Although these schemes vary considerably in their scope and operation (sometimes paying carers directly, sometimes enabling disabled and older people to act as direct employers, sometimes mixing paid and unpaid care), they share the characteristics of (...) commodifying care and support services and will have a potentially profound impact on the relationship between individuals, families, communities and the welfare state. Although the schemes have been evaluated within their own national contexts, little work has been done so far to explore the theoretical implications of their development and extension, particularly from an ethics of care perspective. This paper intends to fill that theoretical gap by drawing on comparative evidence from several schemes across different national contexts to develop an analysis which draws on feminist theory and an ethics of care approach to examine (a) the gendered policy outcomes and impact of such schemes; (b) a feminist analysis of the governance implications of personalisation; (c) the implications for the gendered division of work, particularly between paid and unpaid care work and between different groups of paid and unpaid carers; (d) an ethics of care analysis of the impact of personalisation over the lifecourse of disabled and older people, and carers; and (e) a discussion of the relationship between commodification, empowerment, citizenship and choice drawing on the work of care ethicists. It will draw conclusions about the outcomes of a range of types of personalisation schemes and thus have implications for theory, policy and practice. (shrink)