scholarly journals Producing (im)mobilities in home care for the elderly: the role of home care agencies in Switzerland

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-50
Author(s):  
Huey Shy Chau
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Eu Accession ◽  
Private Care ◽  
Private Households ◽  
Care For The Elderly ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Free Movement Of Persons

The Free Movement of Persons Agreement has fostered the emergence of a new market for live-in care in Switzerland. Private care agencies recruit women from the European Union (EU) accession states and place them as live-in carers for the elderly in private households. This paper focuses on how these agencies organise these live-in care arrangements.  Drawing on concepts of the politics of mobility, I analyse the production of (im)mobilities through the placement and recruitment practices of care agencies and the power relations that underlie live-in care arrangements. The findings show that live-in care is constituted both by mobilities, exemplified by care workers’ circular movements and need to be highly mobile, and by care workers’ immobilities once they start working in a household. The care workers’ mobility is in turn enabled by the agencies’ placement practices and by infrastructures specialised in their movements, which serve as moorings.

Home care for the elderly: the role of relatives, friends and neighbors

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriaan Kalwij ◽  
Giacomo Pasini ◽  
Mingqin Wu
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Care For The Elderly

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF INFORMAL CAREGIVERS FROM THE COMMUNITY NURSE’S PERSPECTIVE: QUALITATIVE STUDY

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (7) ◽  
pp. 181-189
Author(s):  
Aurelija Blaževičienė ◽  
Alina Vaškelytė ◽  
Aušra Kunčienė
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Informal Caregivers ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Home Care Services ◽  
Formal Caregivers ◽  
Care For The Elderly ◽  
The Impact

Patients with chronic health care conditions who require long-tern care are nursed at home, therefore, there is a shift in responsibility for their care from paid formal caregivers to unpaid family members. Aim of this study was to assess the role of informal caregiver’s in-home care from the community nurse’s perspective. Thirty-one nurses, providing home care services to patients with special needs requiring constant care, participated in five semi-structured focus-group discussions. The data analysis was based on descriptive phenomenology. Three distinct phases in the development of informal caregiver–nurse relationship was uncovered: (1) the first phase is associated with the organization of home care in the family context, (2) the management of possibilities and challenges faced by informal caregivers in-home care phase; (3) the impact of home care on informal caregivers‘ quality of life and health phase. This study result shows that in organizing home care for the elderly are lack of cross-sectoral cooperation and teamwork between informal caregivers and community nurses. Therefore, informal caregivers must accept a new role in life as a provider of care, advocating, and supporter roles. Furthermore, as a result of daily fatigue, the informal caregivers‘ quality of life is deteriorating and their social exclusion is increasing.

The economics of home care for the elderly

1986 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-103
Author(s):  
C. Bielawska ◽  
G.S. Rai
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Care For The Elderly

scholarly journals Experiences with the privatization of home care: evidence from Denmark

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Fersch ◽  
Per H Jensen
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Financial Responsibility ◽  
Care For The Elderly

Processes of privatization in home care for the elderly in Denmark have primarily taken the form of outsourcing public-care provisions. The content and quality of services have in principle remained the same, but the providers of services have changed. The welfare state has continued to bear the major responsibility for the provision of elderly care, while outsourcing has allowed clients to choose between public and private providers of care. The major aim of outsourcing has been to empower the frail elderly by providing them with exit-opportunities through a construction of this group as consumers of welfare-state provisions. The central government in Denmark has produced the public-service reform, but the municipalities bear the administrative and financial responsibility for care for the elderly. Further, national policymakers have decided that local authorities (municipalities) must provide to individuals requiring care the opportunities to choose. With this background in mind, this article analyses how national, top-down ideas and the ‘politics of choice' have created tensions locally in the form of municipal resistance and blockages. The article draws on case studies in two Danish municipalities, whereby central politicians and administrative leaders have been interviewed. We have identified four areas of tensions: 1) those between liberal and libertarian ideas and values versus local political orientations and practices; 2) new tensions and lines of demarcation among political actors, where old political conflicts no longer holds; 3) tensions between promises and actual delivery, due to insufficient control of private contractors; and 4) those between market principles and the professional ethics of care providers.

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