Different Forms Of Care Research Articles

The Aggressiveness of Institutionalized Minors Depending on the Type of Residence

This article presents the findings of a research study that sought to identify and compare the levels of aggression exhibited by institutionalised minors, contingent on the type of residence in which they are situated. To this end, the research was conducted on a sample of 200 minors residing in four different forms of care: foster care, traditional placement centre, and apartment. The Buss and Perry aggression questionnaire was employed to assess four dimensions of aggression: verbal, physical, anger and hostility. The results demonstrate the presence of all forms of aggression in the research subjects, albeit with varying levels contingent on the type of residence of the institutionalised minor. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the child protection system requires reform, with an emphasis on developing the maternal care component and reducing the proportion of traditional foster care centres.

The changing health-care system in Ghana: forms of care within residential aged care facilities in urban Accra

PurposeThe emergence of residential aged care facilities (RACFs) within the Ghanaian health-care system has raised eyebrows because, hitherto, the concept of nursing homes had largely been perceived as an anomaly. The purpose of this study is to understand this emerging phenomenon and the activities of care provided within two facilities in the nation’s capital, Accra.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on participant observations and in-depth interviews with purposively sampled 15 residents in the two facilities and eight caregivers. The data were analysed using thematic approach.FindingsThe study found that the daily forms of care mostly performed for the elderly were intimate and non-intimate physical, medical, emotional and spiritual and end-of-life care. The bulk of activities of care were performed in the morning.Originality/valueThe study reveals that the changing landscape of health-care facilities in Ghana to include RACFs indicates RACFs have come to stay to provide different forms of care to older persons who otherwise were cared for by the family.

Treatment Gap in Mental Health Care for Victims of Road Traffic Accidents.

Road traffic accidents (RTAs) are among the most frequent negative life-events. About one in five RTA survivors is susceptible to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Knowledge about needs for, and usage of, mental health services (MHSs) may improve options for care for RTA victims. The current study aimed to assess rates of victims using different MHSs, including psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy and support groups, and to explore correlates of needs for and use of these MHSs. Further, we aimed to estimate the treatment gap in post-RTA care, defined as including people with probable PTSD who did not use MHSs and people wanting but not getting help from MHSs. Dutch victims of nonlethal RTAs (N = 259) completed self-report measures on needs for and use of MHSs and PTSD. Results showed that 26% of participants had utilized care from psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy or support groups. Among people with probable PTSD, this was 56%. Increased posttraumatic stress was the strongest correlate of MHS use. Forty-eight participants (17.8%) had an unmet care need and represented the treatment gap. Commonly reported reasons and barriers preventing MHS use were perceptions that problems were limited or would disappear without care and financial worries. Regarding possible future care, participants reported a preference for face-to-face (over online) help from a psychologist (over other professionals). The treatment gap for Dutch RTA victims may be limited. However, a significant number of RTA victims need care but do not obtain this care. Care options may be improved by reducing practical barriers to MHSs and increasing mental health literacy and acceptability of different forms of care (besides face-to-face care).

Co-Designing a Strategy for Implementing the SPARC Holistic Needs Assessment Tool in the Colombian Clinical Context.

In Colombia, timely access to palliative care (PC) is hampered by difficulties in identifying and referring to necessary services. The SPARC (Sheffield Profile for Assessment and Referral for Care) instrument provides a holistic needs assessment to improve referrals for different forms of care. SPARC was recently validated in Colombian Spanish (SPARC-Sp) but has not yet been implemented in clinical practice. We undertook workshops that aimed to co-design an implementation strategy to inform a future trial testing SPARC-Sp in the Colombian healthcare system. Workshop attendees included patients, informal caregivers, healthcare professionals, volunteers, administrative staff and decision makers. Discussions within the workshops refined implementation and dissemination strategies for SPARC-Sp in practical scenarios. Results include the need for education, clarification and demystification of PC and the lack of time and skills of professionals to identify patients' needs. Attendees recognized SPARC-Sp as a valuable tool for highlighting patients' concerns, whose adaptations are needed in Colombia to address the low literacy of the population and specificities of the healthcare system. We proposed local adaptations to SPARC-Sp and produced five educational videos aimed at health professionals, patients and caregivers to strengthen understanding of holistic needs in PC while building a strategy for SPARC-Sp implementation in the Colombian context.

Trajectories of Cancer Care in Latin America: A Scope Review: Trayectorias de atención al cáncer en América Latina. Una revisión de alcance

ObjectivesIn recent decades there has been a development of research on cancer care trajectories in Latin America; however, the diversity of theoretical-methodological uses of this approach can be confusing and difficult for the academic and professional community to use. To analyze studies that have been carried out in Latin America on cancer care trajectories to propose a typology of the approaches developed and synthesize key findings. MethodsA scope review of studies published in journals indexed in PubMed, LILACS, and SciELO databases in the period 2006-2021 was conducted. Results22 articles were analyzed. A typology of descriptive, evaluative, and interpretative approaches was proposed. From the key findings, the following were identified: the importance of pleasure and the feeling of power in the development of risky practices; the role of popular explanatory models for the identification of abnormality and the search for attention; the interaction of various personal, interpersonal, organizational, and structural barriers that limited timely diagnosis and continuity of treatment; the sequential or parallel use of different forms of care, public and private; and the importance of social support networks. ConclusionsThe proposed typology clarifies the different uses of the approach. The informative synthesis evidences problematic knots regarding multiple barriers to access and allows us to propose as priorities in future research the study of types of cancer, stages, and populations that have been scarcely addressed, as well as the diversification of methodological approaches.

Practices of Care in Participatory Design With Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Digitally Mediated Study.

Participatory Design (PD), albeit an established approach in User-Centered Design, comes with specific challenges when working with older adults as research participants. Addressing these challenges relates to the reflection and negotiation of the positionalities of the researchers and research participants and includes various acts of giving and receiving help. During the COVID-19 pandemic, facets of positionalities and (mutual) care became particularly evident in qualitative and participatory research settings. The aim of this paper was to systematically analyze care practices of participatory (design) research, which are to different extents practices of the latter. Using a multiyear PD project with older people that had to take place remotely over many months, we specify different practices of care; how they relate to collaborative work in the design project; and represent foundational practices for sustainable, long-term co-design. Our research questions were "How can digitally-mediated PD work during COVID-19 and can we understand such digital PD as 'care'?" Our data comes from the Joint Programming Initiative "More Years, Better Lives" (JPI MYBL), a European Union project that aims to promote digital literacy and technology appropriation among older adults in domestic settings. It targeted the cocreation, by older adults and university researchers, of a mobile demo kit website with cocreated resources, aimed at improving the understanding of use options of digital tools. Through a series of workshops, a range of current IT products was explored by a group of 21 older adults, which served as the basis for joint cocreative work on generating design ideas and prototypes. We reflect on the PD process and examine how the actors enact and manifest care. The use of digital technology allowed the participatory project to continue during the COVID-19 pandemic and accentuated the digital skills of older adults and the improvement of digital literacy as part of "care." We provide empirically based evidence of PD with older adults developing digital literacy and sensitizing concepts, based on the notion of care by Tronto for differentiating aspects and processes of care. The data suggest that it is not enough to focus solely on the technologies and how they are used; it is also necessary to focus on the social structures in which help is available and in which technologies offer opportunities to do care work. We document that the cocreation of different digital media tools can be used to provide a community with mutual care. Our study demonstrates how research participants effectively enact different forms of care and how such "care" is a necessary basis for a genuinely participatory approach, which became especially meaningful as a form of support during COVID-19. We reflect on how notions of "care" and "caring" that were central to the pandemic response are also central to PD.

Neoliberally framed suffering in professionals and patients in palliative care settings – ’telling cases’ from an ethnographic multi-sited field study in Denmark

ABSTRACT In western countries, palliative care is a part of the formal healthcare system, ruled by neoliberal, organisational ideas. This Danish study illuminates how nurses and patients with non-western immigrant backgrounds (inter)act in relation to encounters in palliative care settings. Two ‘telling’ cases were selected, based on interviews and participating observations from a multi-sited ethnographic field study in Denmark. The results showed different care consequences of the structural framework, referring to, for example, political healthcare logics, strategies, and priorities, and illuminated how neoliberally organised healthcare systems inflicted suffering on patients and frustration amongst professionals. It did not seem that the immigrant background per se induced the challenges. The understandings of care and treatment conflicted as nurses often represented a medical, neoliberal logic of disease, treatment, and care, and patients often represented a non-medical logic of disease, formed by their lives. When palliative care took place in a general setting, (inter)actions were also influenced by a curative agenda of treatment and care. The study added to the evidence of the power of neo-liberal rationality across different forms of care and populations, regardless of ethnicity or location of that care.

Care in Management: A Review and Justification of an Organizational Value

Care has increasingly been promoted as an element of successful management practice. However, an ethic of care is a normative theory that was initially developed in reference to intimate relationships, and it is unclear if it is an appropriate normative standard in business. The purpose of this review is to bridge the social scientific study of care with philosophical understandings of care and to provide a theoretical justification for care as a managerial value. We review the three different forms of care advanced by the ethics literature: caring relations, organizational care, and care as a virtue. We compare these forms of care to the management litertature. In doing so, we integrate what has previously been a scattered, yet growing, body of research on care. Our review of the literature reveals that care has increasingly been studied in management in relation to an ethic of care. Yet, many of the properties of care have also played a role in other established research domains (e.g., leadership). We discuss and critique the management and ethics literatures on care, paying attention to areas of agreement or disagreeement between the two. We go on to provide a normative justification of care as a value in business. Finally, we close by suggesting directions for future research.

Anthropology of mutualism

What might anthropology offer to our understanding of mutualistic relations? In making sense of these interspecies interactions, which, despite some costs, are ultimately beneficial to each partner species, zoological approaches operate at the level of populations on an adaptive scale. Anthropologists bring focus on individual actors and their subjective experiences within far more condensed temporospatial ethnographic timescales. This guest editorial brings a multispecies anthropological approach into dialogue with zoological understandings of mutualism. It examines the practical and theoretical potential of mutuality to make sense of relations of domestication. Materialistic profit and market‐oriented forms of engagement in the domestic sphere are often detrimental to more‐than‐human communities. The persistence of different kinds of mutual co‐existences, as shown in different forms of care of orphaned animals in Mongolia, Pakistan and Australia, offers an alternative and perhaps more hopeful model of more‐than‐human engagement in the Anthropocene.

Designing Systems with Care: Responding to Inequality in an Online Course in South Africa

Contemporary South Africa is a highly unequal society, emerging from a history of racial segregation, characterized by diversity along dimensions such as class, race, ethnicity, linguistic background, religion, culture and rural-urban locations (Czerniewicz et al., 2020). Informed by this diversity, higher education institutions attempt to “balance the pursuit of equity, quality and development goals” (Badat, 2020, p. 26). Over the last few years, in particular during COVID-19, care-oriented approaches that emphasise student wellbeing and belonging, such as humanizing online teaching, intentional hospitality, liberating structures,and trauma-informed design have gained traction in higher education. Drawing on three dimensions of human relations, namely affect, reciprocity and power associated with Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory, we reflect on how adopting a care approach and working with trauma-informed pedagogies in a postgraduate course on blended and online course design was experienced by course participants. In this paper, we draw on voluntary participant interviews and our own reflections as course facilitators to make an argument for a caring learning design that intentionally creates caring learning experiences for a highly diverse group of students. Participants in this course come from geographically diverse locations, from secondary or corporate environments with differently positioned home institutions and diverse access to resources. Also, participants’ positionality and disciplinary backgrounds require different forms of care. We found that Tronto’s concepts of paternalistic and parochial care useful to reflect on our own care practices, as they highlight the importance of creating spaces where students can co-create the care relationship, while understanding how their different positionalities impact their voice and agency, but also remind us how important it is to understand how students’ context differ from our own and to set up caring relationships that suit their contexts.

Making invisible care visible. Ethics and aesthetics of care in participatory arts practices in times of COVID-19

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic emphasises the importance of care for our societies, yet underscores the inferiority of relational caring practices. During this time, we studied the participatory work of artists working with older adults using participant observations, in-depth interviews and visual ethnography. In this article, we present a case study of one arts initiative, a theatre company engaging seniors in the Netherlands, using ethics and aesthetics of care as sensitising concepts. The findings reveal that this work can promote relational forms of care. This study makes visible how different forms of care can be identified in a participatory art project.

Shelters and clinics: sites where care and violence are mutually constitutive for migrant workers in Singapore

ABSTRACT This paper critically interrogates care and violence, demonstrating how they are both spatialised and mutually constitutive within the shelters and clinics of Singapore for migrant workers. While there are seemingly disconnected sites, both clinics and shelters are utilized to provide different forms of care, discursively represented as spaces of protection and healing. Drawing on ethnographic research with migrant domestic workers at these sites, this paper will, however, argue that shelters and clinics are also spaces where violence is enacted and experienced. Indeed, despite having lived through different forms of violence in their employers’ homes, this paper will reveal how domestic workers were subjected to further suffering and bodily harm; all while, paradoxically, receiving different forms of care. Building on social and cultural geographic debates, and particularly on feminist scholarship that foregrounds care, violence, and the body, this paper will argue that care and violence are mutually constitutive in these sites. Moreover, it will show that the migratory regime in Singapore creates spaces where the care that is practiced cannot be abstracted from violence. Beyond coexisting, in these geographies care and violence are shown to be inextricably connected.

Terrestrial reproduction and parental care drive rapid evolution in the trade-off between offspring size and number across amphibians

The trade-off between offspring size and number is central to life history strategies. Both the evolutionary gain of parental care or more favorable habitats for offspring development are predicted to result in fewer, larger offspring. However, despite much research, it remains unclear whether and how different forms of care and habitats drive the evolution of the trade-off. Using data for over 800 amphibian species, we demonstrate that, after controlling for allometry, amphibians with direct development and those that lay eggs in terrestrial environments have larger eggs and smaller clutches, while different care behaviors and adaptations vary in their effects on the trade-off. Specifically, among the 11 care forms we considered at the egg, tadpole and juvenile stage, egg brooding, male egg attendance, and female egg attendance increase egg size; female tadpole attendance and tadpole feeding decrease egg size, while egg brooding, tadpole feeding, male tadpole attendance, and male tadpole transport decrease clutch size. Unlike egg size that shows exceptionally high rates of phenotypic change in just 19 branches of the amphibian phylogeny, clutch size has evolved at exceptionally high rates in 135 branches, indicating episodes of strong selection; egg and tadpole environment, direct development, egg brooding, tadpole feeding, male tadpole attendance, and tadpole transport explain 80% of these events. By explicitly considering diversity in parental care and offspring habitat by stage of offspring development, this study demonstrates that more favorable conditions for offspring development promote the evolution of larger offspring in smaller broods and reveals that the diversity of parental care forms influences the trade-off in more nuanced ways than previously appreciated.

Lectio Praecursoria: Patchworks of Care: Ethics and practice of care in the organic food movement in Latvia

The thesis introduced in this lectio praecursoria explores the everyday work, ideals and values of the Latvian organic food movement known as tiešā pirkšana (‘direct purchasing’), an initiative which aims to shorten the physical and symbolic distance between producers and consumers; producers, market and regulating policies; and consumers and food. Drawing on the empirical material obtained through long-term ethnographic fieldwork, and theoretical discussions in social and food research, the concept of ‘reconnection’ was chosen to analyse the process of shortening the distance between the different actors involved in one small-scale food provisioning system. By focusing on the notion that there is a link between the reconnection process and the ethics and practice of care, the thesis analyses different forms of care in the various stages of food provisioning in the TP movement.
 Keywords: mall-scale food provisioning, care and food, spatiotemporalities of care, everyday food practices

Talkspace receives NIH grants to conduct telepsychiatry research

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the teletherapy platform Talkspace two grants worth nearly $7 million to research patients' experiences with digital mental health services. The first grant is almost $4 million and comes from the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health Small Business Innovation Research program. It will support a four‐year randomized controlled trial that compares daily messaging‐only therapy to once‐weekly live video session therapy. The study will track differences in outcomes, engagement, ratings of the therapist, type of treatment provided and more to gauge the effectiveness of the different forms of care. Talkspace was also given a $3 million NIH R01 grant for which it will partner with the University of Washington's School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, and Mental Health America. Together, the organizations will investigate the types of traits among patients who benefit the most from digital therapy, as well as how to enhance the onboarding and orientation process to improve user engagement and outcomes.

A regimes-of-mobility-and-welfare approach: The impact of migration and welfare policies on transnational social support networks of older migrants in Australia

In this paper, I examine the implications of welfare and migration policies on transnational aged care arrangements of older migrants in Australia. The paper draws on the results of an ethnographical, biographical and network analytical study of transnational social support networks of older migrants in Perth. I present the developed typology of older migrants and their possibilities of transnational care through three case studies that exemplify each type, namely 'retirement migrant by choice', 'financial obstacles of traditional labour migrants', and 'mobility and welfare regime restrictions of refugees'. The case studies show, first, that the maintenance of social ties across national borders through which different forms of care are organised is constrained by the Australian mobility regime, where temporary migration schemes prevail and migration policies are increasingly restrictive. Second, transnational social support is affected by a welfare regime that is increasingly linked to the mobility regime, as the rights to social welfare and long-term care are often linked to citizenship. Third, inequalities in the possibilities of transnational care and inaccess to mobility are linked to migrants’ legal and socioeconomic status in the country of settlement and the position of their country of origin in the global geopolitical hierarchy. Based on these findings, I propose a 'regimes-of-mobility-and-welfare' approach for the study of transnational social support and family care, which considers the effects of ‘sedentary’ policies and the intertwinement of mobility and welfare regimes.

Who can I turn to? Social networks and the housing, care and support preferences of older lesbian and gay people in the UK

What happens when lesbian and gay people, who are more likely to be childless and single than their heterosexual peers, get older and need support and care? Who can they turn to? In addressing this question, this article draws on data collected as part of a wider project concerning the housing preferences, experiences and concerns of older LGBT people in the United Kingdom. The article explores the social networks that older lesbian and gay people expect to utilise later in life if they require different forms of care. It uses social capital theory and considers the role of ‘families of choice’ in older lesbian and gay people’s lives, questioning whether such bonds may or may not be useful for different forms of care and support older lesbian and gay people may require late in life.

Evolution of health, disease and disability during capitalism

Over time, the understanding of the health-disease process has evolved along with the various environments and conditions in which society has been immersed, with different forms of care, treatment and prevention. Similarly, the social and economic structure has led to inequalities in medical care, generating social subclasses regarding access to health care and physical and functional capacities. This writing briefly introduces the social subclasses in health-disease that have emerged from the socio-economic structure of capitalism.

The Need for Care: A Study of Teachers’ Conceptions of Care and Pupils’ Needs in a Swedish School-Age Educare Setting

This paper presents the findings of a study investigating School-Age Educare (SAE) teachers’ conceptions of care and care practices and how these conceptions of care and actual practices relate to pupils’ needs. The study is based on observations and interviews with two experienced SAE teachers and one young teacher in a Swedish SAE centre, working with pupils between 9–11 years old. The study was undertaken between March 2018 and April 2019, and provides insight into different forms of care and caring practices. The study also shows that pupils nowadays, according to the teachers, have needs that were previously met by their families. The teachers’ conceptions of the importance of a well-functioning group and pupils’ needs to be able to share their feelings, dreams and worries and to value each other’s differences were also salient findings of the study.

“Several times I have asked the judge to get my children back”: 10 years of foster care complaints at the Flemish Office of the Children's Rights Commissioner

AbstractEuropean societies struggle with the question of how to deal best with, and organize care for, those children who, for various reasons, need to be placed out of their home. In an attempt to protect these children, states organize different forms of care. Under the influence of testimonies of abuse and neglect, the image of residential care has become tainted and the placement of looked‐after children in foster families has become increasingly favoured. This evolution towards a manifest choice for foster care is defended as being more in “the interests of the child.” However, the “best interests of the child” notion is applicable in decisions concerning substitute care in many different ways. During the last decade, the shift towards a child's perspective away from a family‐preservation perspective is noticeable. We argue in this paper that this focus on children's needs is at the expense of the rights and identity of the parents. Based on an analysis of 342 complaints concerning foster care reported to the Flemish Office of the Children's Rights Commissioner, we analysed which “alarming situations” are reported and highlight a number of pressing concerns from the perspective of parents.