As the population of Aotearoa New Zealand ages, informal family carers will play an increasingly important role in caring for older adults at home. Multi-generational living arrangements are a growing trend, particularly among Māori communities, where caring for older relatives within the family home is widespread. This article uses in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Māori whānau (extended family members) caring for kaumātua (older family members) at home to explore how carers experienced care coordination in the broader care collective. The findings centred on three interconnected factors that described the collective organisation of care: (1) whānau care as normal; (2) whānau care as collective coordination; and (3) whānau carer knowledge and needs as unseen. The findings show that although whānau care of kaumātua is highly valued, ‘structural holes’ within care systems contribute to challenges in care coordination. Despite extensive whānau support for kaumātua, primary carers often felt that their knowledge, preferences and self-care needs remained unseen and not translatable to those outside the everyday care situation. Rather than assuming an artificial binary difference between ‘collective’ and ‘individually oriented’ care contexts and cultures, analysing the cultural norms surrounding whānau care-giving confirms that collective care system members face similar and different challenges to carers with smaller caring capacities.

Little is known regarding the ways in which practitioners' views and approaches impact support for persons with a migration background (PwM) caring for individuals with dementia. This paper responds to this knowledge gap by identifying how practitioners frame dementia care in families with a migration background, and how these frames can be understood in light of the experiences of PwM caring for a family member with dementia. A total of 41 participants were included: ten practitioners (i.e. health and social care workers) and 31 PwM caring for a family member with dementia. All participants were part of a qualitative research project on dementia care in Dutch families with a migration background. Practitioners' expressed frames were identified through Hochschild's interpretive framework of ‘framing and feeling rules’. Thereafter, practitioners' identified frames were related to the care experiences of PwM caring for a family member with dementia. Findings indicate that practitioners operate within an approach that does not sufficiently take into account the uniqueness of each family carer. This leads to frictions within the practitioner–client relationship. We thus highlight the need for discussions about the tenability of practitioners' views and approaches in an increasingly globalised and diverse society.

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.

In the context of current and expected demographic changes, the issues of which services the welfare state should offer and, ultimately, the very function of the welfare state are currently debated in Norway. The political discourse on health and care services for older adults has morphed into an accepted reality in which the system must be altered, prompting policy makers and stakeholders to find new and novel solutions to problems associated with population ageing. In this paper, we discuss one such proposed solution: the transformation of health and care services for the older adult population through the increased involvement of volunteers. We ask how volunteer efforts are articulated and delineated through official accounts and discuss the implications of such an articulation and delineation. We seek answers to these questions through a critical discourse analysis of recent governmental white papers. We investigate, in other words, volunteer efforts as a political instrument. We argue that the official representation of how efforts in health and care services should be re-aligned take the form of a distinct discourse of ‘voluntarism’. Within this ‘voluntarism’, volunteer efforts have been altered from a third sector comprising charity and non-profit organisations that contribute within or as a supplement to the largely public-run welfare system to a limitless and extensive concept that is blurring the boundaries to informal care.

Care in Chile, as in most Latin American countries, remains largely the responsibility of female family members in informal arrangements with little government support. The analysis of caring for a dependent older person has commonly been approached from the burden of care perspective, focusing on the tasks carried out, the time spent providing care and the negative (burdensome) consequences for the care-giver. This study reveals the daily experiences of family care-givers of older people through a thematic data analysis of 42 interviews with main family carers of an older person as experienced by the carers themselves. Findings highlight the complex nature of care work. Tasks carried out do not necessarily relate to the intensity of the care experience or a negative experience. Care-givers can work long hours providing care and still feel comfortable and find the experience emotionally rewarding. Care-givers might also carry out only a few tasks and experience pressure. The broader social and economic context can generate constraints that make a specific set of tasks easier or harder on the carer, but these contextual factors do not fully explain the experience of care. Relations, and particularly those that carry an emotional component such as the carer-older person, carer-siblings and carer-spouse, must be considered alongside the tasks and the difficulties or potential constraints of the context to understand the care experience.

This article explores how far the concepts of de-familialisation/familialisation are adequate to the classification of long-term care (LTC) policies for older people. In the theoretical debate over LTC policies, de-familialising and familialising policies are often treated as opposites. We propose re-conceptualising the relation between de-familialisation and familialisation, arguing that they represent substantially different types of policy that, in theory, can vary relatively autonomously. In order to evaluate this theoretical assumption, this article investigates the relation between the generosity level of LTC policies on extra-familial care, and the generosity level of LTC policies on paid family care, introducing a new multi-dimensional approach to measuring the generosity of LTC policy for older persons. It also explores the consequences of this for gender equality. The empirical study is based on a cross-national comparison of LTC policies in five European welfare states which show significant differences in their welfare state tradition. Data used are from document analysis of care policy law, the Mutual Information System on Social Protection, the European Quality of Life Survey and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The findings support the argument that de-familialising and familialising LTC policies can vary relatively independently of each other in theory. It turns out that we get a better understanding of the relationship between LTC policy and gender equality if we analyse the role of different combinations of extra-familial and familial LTC policies for gender equality. The paper brings new insights into the ways welfare states act in regard to their LTC policies. It helps to clarify how the concept of de-familialisation/familialisation can be understood, and what this means for the relationship between LTC policies and gender equality.

China has seen a rapid decline of the traditional multi-generational household and an increase in rural-to-urban migration, raising concerns about a possible breakdown of the informal support system. Against this background, the paper looks at family care-giving (or the absence thereof) to parents in three different living arrangements: with any child or child-in-law (co-resident); independent with at least one child living in the same community (networked); and without any children in either the household or the community (isolated). It also compares the care-giving arrangements of single elders to those living with a spouse. The sample, which is derived from the comprehensive China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), contains data on 887 functionally impaired individuals aged 60 and above. The findings suggest that married parents are mostly cared for by their spouse, even if they co-reside with adult children. Proximity to children is particularly important for single elders, who are more likely to lack a care-giver when living independently. There appears to be a hierarchy in family care responsibilities, where children step in as care-givers only when the spouse is no longer able to fulfil this role. While these findings imply a significant deviation from traditional practices and norms of ‘filial piety’, they can be interpreted as a rational adaptation to the changed economic circumstances in rural China.

This paper examines the relationship between attitudes of filial responsibility and five different types of care-giving behaviours to parents among three cultural groups. It does so within an assessment of the relative importance of cultural versus structural factors for care-giving behaviours. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 100 Caucasian-Canadians, 90 Chinese-Canadians and 125 Hong Kong-Chinese. Multiple regression analyses assessed the association of cultural and structural factors with behaviours among the total sample and each of the three cultural groups. Limited support was found for an association between care-giving attitudes and care-giving behaviours. Attitudes are related to emotional support only among the two Chinese groups as well as to financial support among Chinese-Canadian respondents and to companionship among Hong Kong-Chinese respondents. Attitudes are not the strongest predictors and are unrelated to assistance with basic and instrumental activities of daily living. However, cultural group per se is a strong predictor of care-giving behaviours as are: parental ill health, living arrangements, and relationship quality. This study suggests gerontological assumptions about the role of societal norms and personal attitudes in parental care-giving should be questioned. It also suggests the need for further inquiry into unpacking those aspects of ‘cultural group’ that are related to behavioural differences, and the importance of examining multiple types of care-giving behaviours and of distinguishing task-oriented helping behaviour from other types of assistance.

Cet article examine le lien entre la famille et l'État au niveau des traitements pour les personnes âgées. L'auteur cherche à déterminer pourquoi il incombe à la famille et plus particulièrement aux femmes de veiller sur les membres âgés de la parenté. Il examine également le rôle que l'état joue en soulignant l'importance du rôle de la famille et il cite à cet effet une étude empirique importante qui porte sur les traitements offerts aux personnes âgées à Sheffield en Grande-Bretagne. Les résultats de cette étude sont utilisés pour mettre en valeur la base normative de la relation de soins. En conclusion, l'auteur examine divers autres genres de traitements et il émet des doutes concernant l'hypothèse naïve d'un conflit entre les personnes âgées et ceux qui veillent sur elles.

Drawing on a qualitative study of women as givers and receivers of care, this paper explores older women's experiences of needing care. Old women find themselves in a social context in which government services are kept in the background and families are generally regarded as the proper locus of assistance to old people. Respondents described contradictions between needing support and security and wanting to adhere to cultural values of independence and self-sufficiency. Their low expectations of public services and sense of marginality in their families exacerbated these dilemmas. The fallacy of understanding old women's conduct in this constrained context as the exercise of choice is elaborated, and attention is given to ways of fostering the conditions in which elderly women can shape the kinds of supportive environments they would like to see in the future.

The aim of this article is to analyse 20 Finnish working carers' perceptions of their sibling relations and the sharing of the responsibility for parental care. The main focus is on the interviewees' rationales for the participation or non-participation of their siblings in the parents' care. Almost all the interviewed carers stated that the division of care responsibilities is unequal and that they are the primary carers, but the majority did not convey any clear intention to try to persuade their siblings to increase their participation in parental care. In many cases, the siblings were described either as entirely absent or as providing occasional backup, but some interviewees reported that caring for the parent(s) was shared with their other siblings. Consequently, three participation patterns were identified: ‘absence’, ‘backup’ and ‘togetherness’. All the interviewees offered rationales for the unequal division of care tasks and responsibilities among the siblings. The discussion focuses on these rationales and their variations by participation patterns, and considers the similarity of the findings to those from previous American and British studies. The study concludes that social-care services should take the primary carer's siblings into consideration, although not always as a ‘resource’. It should not be taken for granted or assumed that the primary care-giver receives help from her or his siblings, even if their relationship is otherwise close and unproblematic.

Payments for care, by which people in need of long-term care directly employ care workers, have been introduced in many European countries. In The Netherlands, care dependants are allowed to use these payments to hire relatives to perform care tasks. Care-givers who are employed by their relatives are in a hybrid position, because they are contracted as employees in the informal setting of a family home and its affective care relationships. This paper reports a qualitative study of relatives' experiences of payments for care and how these affect their care-giving. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 17 paid carers: they were asked to respond to three fictional vignettes of contrasting care trajectories. It was found that the cash nexus had mixed and partly contradictory implications for the paid care-givers. On the one hand, the care-givers were satisfied with the arrangement, as the payments recognised and raised their status as carers, and were seen as reward and reciprocation for their care work. Some carers had found that the contract helped manage strained relationships, by enabling a clearer differentiation of care tasks from affection. On the other hand, some who regarded themselves as employees and saw their role as equivalent to formal carers felt a greater obligation to provide high-quality care, and found that they were thanked less often and received fewer tokens of gratitude.

The aim of this paper is to stimulate theoretical thought about financial elder abuse within families, by exploring the potential of ‘routine activities theory’ for raising our understanding of, and response to, its occurrences. Research into financial elder abuse, defined as the illegal or improper use of a person's finances or property by another person, has tended to emphasise the abusive event and the associated risk factors. ‘Routine activities theory’, in contrast, directs attention more to developing prevention strategies that focus on everyday activities and hence seek to reduce the opportunities for illegal activity. The authors' research programme on the broad topic of money management and older people in Australia has conceptualised financial elder abuse as one possible outcome of the family management of older people's assets. This paper reports an application of routine activities theory to in-depth data of the asset-management practices and experiences of 81 family members who were assisting 86 older people. The paper concludes that the theory contributes to our understanding of how and why financial abuse occurs in families. It makes clear the distorting influence of a sense of entitlement and the preventive importance of both capable guardians, to oversee family-asset management and be alert to mismanagement, and the need for improved financial awareness, skills and probity in the community in connection with this common task of assisting older people to manage their financial assets.

This article reports research funded as part of the recent ESRC Growing Older initiative. The project ‘Family, Work and Quality of Life’ explored changes in economic and social roles across four birth cohorts passing through mid-life (45–59/64 years) in Britain. The relationship between multiple role responsibilities and a range of indicators of quality of life, including material resources, health and engagement in social activities were investigated. The research was based upon secondary analysis of four different surveys: the 2000 British Household Panel Study, the 1994–95 Family and Working Lives Survey, the 1985, 1990, 1995, and 2000 General Household Surveys, and the longitudinal Retirement Survey (1988/89 and 1994). A particularly interesting finding is that being ‘caught in the middle’, in terms of having simultaneous care-giving responsibilities to dependent children and frail parents whilst in paid work, has been atypical. Only one-in-nine British women, and one-in-ten British men, aged 45–49 years (born in 1941–45) occupy all three roles concurrently, but multiple role occupancy is increasing across cohorts, particularly the combination of caring and paid work. Role occupancy significantly affects the accumulation of pension entitlements (particularly second-tier pensions), with the effect that many women who have fulfilled the important social roles of carer and parent will face a low income in old age. Where adverse health outcomes were found, parental role in mid-life was most frequently associated with such poor health, suggesting that continued parental demands in mid-life may have negative health consequences.

This paper uses data from the European Community Household Panel surveys of 1994 and 1996 to study the association between changes in care-giving and changes in weekly work hours. Our sample comprises women aged 45–59 years who participated in the labour force in at least one of the two years studied. Controlling for country variation, we find significant relationships between starting or increasing informal care-giving and changes in weekly work hours. No such association is found however among women terminating a care-giving commitment or reducing their care hours. Starting care-giving significantly reduces work hours for women in northern European countries (except Ireland). By contrast, women in southern Europe and Ireland respond to an increase in care-giving hours by a smaller increase or a higher decrease in work hours than non care-givers. In summary, our results show that the impact of care-giving on adjustments of weekly work hours is asymmetrical and that it differs in southern and northern Europe.

This paper aims to study the applicability of the shared care approach in the Chinese community in Britain. The discussion is based on findings of two studies on family care of older people in London conducted respectively in 1991 and 1998. Both studies examined the needs of Chinese older people and whether and how their needs were met by informal care. The findings show that there is a strong belief among Chinese families that older people should live with their sons. While the Chinese families were highly motivated to take care of their older family members, and many of them felt obliged to live with their parents and wanted to give assistance to them, not all were, in practice, able to do so as much as they would have wished. Shortfall between what older people needed and the assistance they received was obvious, especially in relation to personal care. It is argued that traditional Chinese values still carry some influence in obliging the Chinese to look after their elderly family members. However, they are not sufficiently influential to guarantee sufficient care. A unique model of shared care is thus clearly and precisely called for by the findings of this study.