This article is based on a study that investigated factors associated with long-term care wait list placement in Ontario, Canada. We based the study’s analysis on Resident Assessment Instrument for Home Care (RAI-HC) data for 2014 in the North West Local Health Integration Network (LHIN). Our analysis quantified the contribution of three factors on the likelihood of wait list placement: (1) care recipient, (2) informal caregiver, and (3) formal system. We find that all three factors are significantly related to wait list placement. The results of this analysis could have implications for policies aimed at reducing the number of wait-listed individuals in the community.

Within a neoliberal policy context that shifts responsibility for health and well-being from the state to families and individuals, Canadian home care strategies tend to present family members as “partners in care”. Drawing on an interpretive grounded theory study that involved 34 qualitative interviews, this article examines older people’s experiences at the intersections of formal home care and family/friend care arrangements, against the backdrop of policies that emphasize partnerships with family. The core concept derived from the interviews was reconciling tensions between care needs and concerns about burdening others, in the context of available home and community care. Four processes are identified, which illustrate how access to financial and social resources may lead to opportunities and constraints in experiences of care. Findings underscore the emotional and practical challenges that older people may encounter vis-à-vis policy discourses that encourage family responsibility for care. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Care for older people is a complex phenomenon, and is an area of pressing policy concern. Bringing together literature on care from social gerontology and economics, we report the findings of a mixed-methods project exploring networks of informal caring. Using quantitative data from the British Household Panel Survey (official survey of British households), together with qualitative interviews with older people and informal carers, we describe differences in formal care networks, and the factors and decision-making processes that have contributed to the formation of the networks. A network approach to care permits both quantitative and qualitative study, and the approach can be used to explore many important questions.

This article reviews the international English-language literature on social support and caregiving in gerontology since the early 1990s. The literature has grown, but consensus on the terms’ meaning and measurement is lacking. Interest is ongoing in practical help, in benefits of social support, and in demands and negative outcomes for caregivers, with growing but less emphasis on more theoretical questions, on negative outcomes from the receipt of support, and on positive consequences of providing care. Nevertheless, social support is duly recognized as a social determinant of health and receiving attention at policy levels – both are significant shifts from two decades ago and add to the interest this area will receive from researchers in coming decades. There remain many unanswered questions regarding the changing societal context, but it is clear that the social support of others – throughout our lives including old age – will continue in the future, albeit in ever-changing forms.

Although the experiences of formal and informal caregiving have been discussed and debated in the literature, more is assumed than is actually known (McDaniel & Gee, 1993). This qualitative study explored both informal and formal caregivers' perceptions of their own caregiving and the views of each other's caregiving. Information was collected through the use of in-depth interviews with 23 family caregivers and 15 nurses providing home care to older persons. Analysis of interview transcripts and field notes reveals that both informal and formal caregivers engage in all facets of caring work – physical, intellectual and emotional care – but that they carry out this work in varying degrees, and for different reasons. The reasons given for these differences, namely the nurses' professional knowledge and higher status designation, are key elements that define the boundaries between professional and family caregiving. However, it is apparent that, over time, this demarcation diminishes as family caregivers' knowledge and skill match those of health professionals. Study findings point to implications for future theory development and research.