Abstract
Each culture has a deeply rooted understanding of what constitutes the ideal foreldercare organization. This article investigates the role of family members in the delegation and provision of eldercare by private for-profit agencies in the Czech Republic. In this post-socialist country with a high level of intergenerational solidarity, a new market for eldercare has emerged in recent decades. We are interested in how the dominance of the family in eldercare provision is inscribed in the functioning of forprofit agencies and their caring practices. We examine how the role of family members whose elderly relatives receive paid care provided by private for-profit agencies is conceptualized by those who sell the care services, those who provide these services, and the care recipients themselves. We draw upon interviews conducted with the owners of private agencies, ethnographic observations, and informal interviews with paid care workers.
Highlights
Each culture has a deeply rooted understanding of what constitutes the ideal for eldercare organization
We focused on how the role of family members is conceptualized when the eldercare is transferred from the family members to the private market
Our interest in the role of family members had two origins: the prevailing intergenerational solidarity in the Czech Republic which leads to expectations regarding how eldercare should be organized within the family and the emergence of for-profit eldercare agencies as new actors in the Czech Republic
Summary
Each culture has a deeply rooted understanding of what constitutes the ideal for eldercare organization. The first is the conceptualization of caregiving that includes care management (Archbold 1983; Rosenthal et al 2007; James 1992; Brody 2004), and the second is the research on the relationships that develop in and through paid care work by the care workers, care managers, and care recipients. A close investigation of the managerial aspects of care and an examination of its nature is provided by Rosenthal et al (2007) They identified several important characteristics: the combination of care provision and care management in the daily life of family caregivers; the multidimensional character of care management, including orchestrating care; and financial and bureaucratic management. The agency plays a crucial role in creating the first contact between care workers and care receivers, in supervising the whole process of caring, and in shaping the demand for this service generally
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