Impact Of Care Responsibilities Research Articles

The Mistress of Bond: Eileen Sullivan, and the Role of Cutting the Cloth of James Bond's Wardrobe and Beyond

This article spotlights the work of Eileen Sullivan and her career as a wardrobe mistress, later wardrobe supervisor, which included working on the James Bond films from Dr No (1962) until You Only Live Twice (1967). It will further consider how her career and role as a wardrobe mistress and supervisor changed within the British film industry from the mid-1940s until the mid-1980s, through personal papers shared by her family with me. Alongside this, the article draws upon papers available in the Film Finances Archive, the British Film Institute (BFI) and the British Library. This article will work to redress the absence in scholarship on the labour provided by costume workers below that of the costume designer, which as Melanie Williams (2016) has previously recognised, has been rendered invisible despite their costume work appearing on screen that contributes to the overall visual coherence of a film’s design. It will also address the difficulties of researching the work of wardrobe personnel who have hitherto remained unacknowledged in broader scholarship, and analyse the role of the wardrobe mistress and supervisor including agency and labour, and the impact of caring responsibilities on this ‘gendered’ role.

Summarising Quantitative Outcomes in Parental Mental Illness Research.

A quarter of all children grow up in a family where a parent experiences a mental illness (FaPMI). Research activity in this area is growing rapidly and it is now critical to better understand the extant knowledge in the field. This scoping review of quantitative FaPMI literature parallels a qualitative literature review and a series of Delphi studies with key stakeholders (e.g. lived experience and clinicians), that is part of a larger program of research to achieve consensus regarding the direction of FaPMI research; including making recommendations about outcomes and measures. The programme of research aims to promote and facilitate greater comparison and learning across studies and settings. Initially this scoping review summarises the quality and focus (e.g. country and sampling) of 50 quantitative studies from 2000 to 2023 and then classifies studies according to outcomes for parents, children and families. Six to eleven years were the most common child sample group and girls were slightly underrepresented (49/51) and parents were 88% mothers. Analogous parent and child outcomes were; mental illness/psychopathology, wellbeing, mental health literacy, trauma and stressful experiences, coping, help seeking/service need, within family relationships and supports, outside family relationships and supports. Additional outcomes for parents were; parenting skills, parent competence and parenting stress and for children in relation to their; cognitive functioning and caregiving. The family related outcomes were the within and outside family relationships and supports. Since 2000 there have been 136 different survey instruments employed with approximately 80% used in only one study. This suggests that the broader goals of the program of research are warranted as there is a need for less heterogeneity in measures used. Suggested areas for future research include a sampling focus on fathers, economic evaluations of programs, parent mental health literacy, trauma, genetics and integrating well-being concepts into research designs. Child research should focus on mental health literacy, the level and impact of caring responsibilities, assessing past trauma and the roles of close family and external supports.

Supporting adult unpaid carers via an online dancing intervention: A feasibility/acceptability study.

Unpaid carers often experience poor mental and physical health linked to their caring role. Engagement in physical activity has been shown to alleviate these negative health outcomes, but it is harder for carers to find the time, energy and space to exercise. This qualitative study, based in the UK, explored the feasibility of an online, dance-based physical activity intervention with six female unpaid carers. Five themes resulted from the thematic analysis of the pre- and post-intervention interviews: Perceived physical health benefits of the intervention; Perceived mental health benefits of the intervention; Satisfactoriness of the dance classes; Impact of caring responsibilities on participation; and Suggestions for future classes. Further research is required to measure the effectiveness of the dance intervention in improving mental and physical wellbeing with larger samples including a wider mix of carers in terms of gender, age and health conditions of the care recipients, as well as international samples. Future research should also consider the barriers that some carers may face when accessing an online intervention, and alternative forms of exercise that may appeal to other groups of carers (e.g., male carers, older adult carers).

Understanding what affects psychological morbidity in informal carers when providing care at home for patients at the end of life: a systematic qualitative evidence synthesis.

Informal carers are central in supporting patients at the end of life, but this has substantial negative impacts on carers' own mental health. When carers are unable to cope, this may affect their ability to support the patient and increase the likelihood of patient hospital admissions. Further, demographic changes mean demands for care at and before end of life are increasing and existing services will struggle to meet these demands. It is important to recognise carers as a vital resource and prevent adverse health outcomes from caregiving (and thereby limit their consequences). Large individual variation in the level of psychological morbidity from end-of-life caregiving suggests there is scope for interventions to improve carer mental health if we can understand the underlying factors. This meta-synthesis of qualitative studies aims to identify factors reported by carers as important to their mental health. Searches of MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, PsycINFO, Social Science Citation Index, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and Cochrane Qualitative Reviews 1 January 2009 to 24 November 2019 for empirical publications from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries in English/Scandinavian on factors affecting adult carer mental health during end-of-life caregiving in home settings. Systematic qualitative meta-synthesis in collaboration with a Public Patient Involvement carer Review Advisory Panel, included thematic synthesis, followed by a best-fit framework synthesis, informed by principles of meta-ethnography. Critical Appraisal Skills Programme Qualitative Studies Checklist was used. Thirty-three eligible studies identified six themes encompassing factors perceived by carers to affect their mental health during end-of-life caregiving. These were: (1) the patient condition (including patient decline); (2) impact of caring responsibilities (including exhaustion, lack of time for own needs, isolation); (3) relationships (including quality of the patient-carer relationship); (4) finances (including financial concerns, impact on work); (5) carers' internal processes (including loss of autonomy, lack of confidence, coping strategies); and (6) support (including lack of informal support, inadequacies in formal support information and care provision, limited collaboration, disjointed care). Reported strategies to improve mental health were linked to the final two themes, with suggestions on how to manage carers' internal processes and build appropriate support. Findings correspond with literature 1998-2008, indicating consistency in factors affecting carers and adding validity to findings. The review was limited to caregiving in the home setting and studies from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries published in English and Scandinavian. Identified papers predominantly considered carers of people with cancer, with little research into ethnic-minority perspectives. The review may therefore not fully encompass factors affecting carers of people with longer-term conditions, or those within other care settings, countries and population groups. A wide range of both internal and contextual factors may lead to psychological morbidity when caring for someone at the end of life. Future work within practice therefore requires a broad-based rather than narrow approach to sustaining and improving carer mental health. Future work within research requires collaboration between researchers and stakeholders within policy, commissioning, practice and carer organisations to develop solutions and assess their effectiveness. Further, researchers need to develop better models for factors affecting carer mental health and their interaction, to build a stronger evidence base and better guide interventions. This study is registered as PROSPERO CRD42019130279. This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme as award number HSDR 18/01/01 and will be published in full in Health and Social Care Delivery Research. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

Understanding the potential factors affecting carers’ mental health during end-of-life home care: a meta synthesis of the research literature

Background Family carers are central in supporting patients nearing the end of life, but this often has an impact on their own mental health. Understanding what factors may affect carers’ mental health is important in developing strategies to maintain mental health, through identifying carers at risk who may need added monitoring and support or developing interventions to change modifiable factors. Reviews of the qualitative, observational and intervention literature were conducted to address this. Aims (1) to review trials of carer interventions to improve our understanding of factors related to carer mental health identified in earlier qualitative and observational reviews; (2) to synthesise the evidence from our qualitative, observational and intervention reviews on factors related to carers’ mental health during end-of-life caregiving. Method We carried out searches of MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO® (American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, USA), Social Sciences Citation Index, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE) from 1 January 2009 to 24 November 2019. We included studies into adult informal/family carers for adult patients at the end of life cared for at home that considered any factor related to carer mental health (anxiety, depression, distress, quality of life) pre bereavement. The quality appraisal used Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) checklists and the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. The qualitative review analysis developed themes that then provided a framework for the quantitative review analyses. Findings from all three reviews were mapped onto a single framework, informed by a carer Review Advisory Panel. Results A total of 31 qualitative, 60 observational, 12 intervention and 3 mixed-methods studies were identified. Factors associated with carer mental health were as follows: (1) patient condition, particularly psychological symptoms and quality of life; (2) impact of caring responsibilities, particularly life changes, workload and carer burden; (3) relationships, particularly with the patient; (4) finances, whether sufficient or not; (5) internal processes, particularly self-efficacy; (6) support, particularly adequacy and quality of support; (7) contextual factors, particularly age and gender. The three types of literature were reflected in most themes and yielded similar or complementary results, adding validity to findings. Only observational studies investigated contextual factors. Intervention studies focused on modifiable factors, but added little evidence on the causal direction between factors and mental health owing to design and analysis limitations. Relationships and finance received little attention overall. There was limited research into ethnicity, race or culture. Quantitative research missed some factors highlighted by carers in qualitative studies (e.g. quality aspects of formal support), and focused more on ‘self-management’ within internal processes (emphasised less by carers). Limitations Findings are from Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country English-language publications on adult carers and patients in the home setting and limited to these contexts. Literature heterogeneity (study focus, objectives, methods, variables, measures) hindered meta-synthesis. Conclusions Future work requires broad stakeholder engagement to address the diverse range of factors associated with carers’ mental health. Project findings will be disseminated accordingly. Future research needs more (1) work on defining and measuring concepts; (2) longitudinal design, repeated measurement and path analysis, to move beyond evidence of association towards an understanding of causal relationships; (3) focus on factors that matter to carers rather than what is easily measured or manipulated; and (4) investigation of relationships, finance, ethnicity, race and culture. Study registration This study is registered as PROSPERO CRD42019130279. Funding This project was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health and Social Care Delivery Research programme and will be published in Health and Social Care Delivery Research. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information.

"Having a family is the new normal": Parenting in neoliberal academia during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The outbreak of the COVID‐19 pandemic has made explicit the burden of care shouldered by academic mothers, in addition to juggling their scholarly commitments. Although discussions are abundant on the impact of caring responsibilities on the careers of women academics, neoliberal academia continues to minimize such struggles. Despite the disruptions to family routines caused by the health crisis, academic institutions have expected academic mothers and fathers to continue undertaking their professional responsibilities at the same level as before, disregarding their parenting demands. This paper contributes to the research on parenthood in academia by looking at how, throughout the pandemic, academic parents have negotiated the tensions between parenthood and academic demands, and by investigating the strategies they use to confront neoliberal culture of academic performativity, even amid the health crisis. The paper engages with the “space invaders” concept used by Puwar (2004) to analyze the “hypervisibility” of academic mothers' and fathers' “bodies out of place” during the pandemic, and to investigate their “renegade acts” against the uncaring attitudes of their institutions. Evidence is drawn from a qualitative study conducted during December 2020 and January 2021 among scholars affiliated to Portuguese academic institutions: 17 in‐depth interviews conducted with women, and two mixed‐gender focus groups. Our results research reveal how the experiences of academic mothers and fathers were not uniform during the pandemic. In addition, it shows how, despite their commitment to their academic responsibilities, these parents have crafted various resistance strategies to confront the institutional pressure to continue maintain their working routines, and instead positioning themselves as “more than just academics.”

Creativity and Care in times of crisis: an analysis of the challenges of the COVID-19 virus experienced by social work students in practice placement

ABSTRACT COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the way social work responds to a wide range of social issues facing PWLE (People with Learned Experience). This paper evaluates a small-scale research project conducted by academics teaching on a United Kingdom (UK) social work degree programme. It explores the experience of students undertaking social work placements and how their practice was impacted upon by the lockdown. The focus concerns the challenges students faced when they were unable to continue their real-time practice placements and instead were asked to undertake virtual learning experiences through the use of Action Learning Sets (ALS) and Blogs. The responses indicate that the students found the use of Action Learning Sets improved their experience during a difficult period. Important lessons can be learned which can contribute to enhancing the educational experience on social work programmes in the UK. These included the recognition of the student voice in delivery, the impact of caring responsibilities, and the need, in future interventions, to directly involve People With Lived Experience in the development and delivery of such initiatives.

The Impact of Care Responsibilities on Work

The Impact of Care Responsibilities on Work

Sticky care and conference travel: unpacking care as an explanatory factor for gendered academic immobility

While there is increasing awareness of the contributing effect of the academic mobility imperative on gendered inequalities in the academic profession at large, there is a missing link in current research on this topic. Namely, while ‘care’ is often named as the explanatory factor for why women, and to an extent professionals of any gender at peak childrearing age, are less mobile, this article argues that care is insufficient as an explanatory factor for immobility. Care and other terms such as ‘family responsibilities’ and ‘domestic obligations’ come to serve as a shorthand or explanatory factor for gendered immobility, but these terms elide the complexity of the relationship between care and mobility. This article argues that, without a fuller understanding of how care and mobility intersect, inclusivity drives run the risk of misunderstanding or even reproducing the problem. The specific mobility addressed here is international conference travel as a form of short-term academic mobility which contributes to academic career success and the perpetuation of a mobile academic ideal. The article elaborates a novel conceptual construct, ‘sticky care’, which is applied to empirical data from a diary-interview study of the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ conference participation. Two dominant mobility-related strategies are elaborated: ‘night/s away’ and ‘get back’. The overarching ambition of this article is at a conceptual level: to bring more complexity and nuance to the concept of care when it is mobilized as an explanatory factor for (gendered) immobility and indeed for inequalities in the academic profession at large.

Carefree conferences? Academics with caring responsibilities performing mobile academic subjectivities

ABSTRACTThis article explores how academics with caring responsibilities negotiate the mobility imperative, with specific reference to attending conferences. We argue that, in the neoliberal and ‘careless’ context of higher education, negotiating conflicting identities of academic and carer are fraught with tensions for carers as they try to reconcile the mobility imperative with their caring responsibilities. We acknowledge and also challenge the naturalised relationship between care and femininity, and use a feminist poststructuralist approach to analyse the competing discourses surrounding academic and care work. We draw on two distinct, but related, research projects with predominantly UK-based participants. Moreau’s project (‘Carers and Careers’, 2015–2017) explored how academic carers negotiate academic cultures which tend to render care work invisible, using interviews with academic carers and policy staff. Henderson’s project (‘In Two Places at Once’, 2017–2018) focused on the impact of caring responsibilities on academics’ conference participation, using diary-interview method.

Mental health of carers in Wales: a national population survey

BackgroundInformal care is increasingly common in ageing populations. However, the impact of caring responsibilities on carers’ mental health remains unclear. We used data from the HealthWise Wales (HWW) cohort to examine the impact of caregiving on the mental health of carers. MethodsHWW collects demographic, lifestyle, and opinion data, which are linked to routine health-care records, from individuals aged 16 years or older who live in Wales, UK (n=21 779). Mental health was assessed by use of the short Mental Health Inventory (MHI-5) and self-reported diagnosis of mental health conditions. Data on diagnosis of common mental disorders (CMD), including depression and anxiety, were obtained from linked health-care records. Level of caring responsibilities and its impact on the individual's work were self-reported. We estimated associations between caring responsibilities and CMD using logistic regression adjusting for gender, age, and deprivation. HWW received ethics approval from Wales Research Ethics Committee (REC) 3 on March 16, 2015 (reference 15/WA/0076). All participants gave informed consent digitally as a pre-requisite for registration online. FindingsThe cohort included 3682 carers; 2791 (76%) were female, 2833 (77%) were aged 45 years or older, and 1900 (53%) lived in more deprived areas. The cohort of non-carers included 10 023 people; 7107 (71%) were female, 6030 (60%) were aged 45 years or older, and 4814 (49%) lived in more deprived areas. Of those identifying as carers, 1271 (35%) of 3607 with linked health records self-reported a CMD and 1331 (44%) of 3057 with linked health records had a diagnosis of a CMD versus 3029 (31%) and 2992 (36%) of non-carers, respectively. There was 80% agreement between self-report and recorded diagnosis of a CMD in health-care records. Compared with non-carers, carers were 1·3 times more likely to have an MHI5 score indicating current CMD (odds ratio [OR] 1·28, 95% CI 1·17–1·40; p<0·0001). Participants who had previously given up work to provide care were also more likely to have an MHI5 score indicative of a CMD (1·67, 1·47–1·88; p<0·0001). Being a carer was further linked to the likelihood of self-reported diagnosis of a CMD (1·21, 1·11–1·32; p<0·0001) and of diagnosis of a CMD from health-care records (1·32, 1·21–1·44; p<0·0001), even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors. InterpretationThis study suggests that caring is linked to poor mental health, emphasising the potential burden of caring responsibilities on the carers’ mental health across the population. While acknowledging the cross-sectional nature of these data, these findings highlight the need to develop and test interventions that can support informal carers to protect their mental health. FundingHealth and Care Research Wales.

Young Adult Carers: The Impact of Caring on Health and Education

Research has shown that young people who care for parents and relatives (young carers and young adult carers) are at greater risk of mental and emotional difficulties and are more likely to do badly at school or college. To explore the difficulties faced by young adult carers (aged 14–25) in the UK, an online survey was conducted. Almost half (45%) of the 295 respondents reported having a mental health problem. The relationship between the extent of caring and perceived mental health problems and the impact of caring responsibilities on work and education were investigated.

Social tourism & older people: the IMSERSO initiative

ABSTRACTExtant demand-perspective social tourism studies have generally focused on children, families and the disabled whilst older people remain an under-researched group in relation to the personal and social benefits of social tourism initiatives. This study discusses the lack of research on social tourism and older people and takes a demand-side perspective to examine one of the world’s most developed and large-scale social tourism schemes for older people, the Spanish Government’s IMSERSO programme. A qualitative approach explores the nature of older people’s engagement with the scheme and its impact on their wellbeing, through individual in-depth interviews with twenty-seven IMSERSO participants in Benidorm, Spain – a popular IMSERSO destination. The thematic analysis is structured around five themes: social connectivity, the impact of caring responsibilities, a new beginning, escape and practical support. The findings for these IMSERSO participants suggest that, as factors such as caring obligations and hardship experienced in early life are reduced in later life, they have the capacity for increased holiday-taking and social activity and consequently for participation in the IMSERSO scheme. The scheme is found to have a positive impact on their wellbeing by providing opportunities for meeting and interacting with new people, acting as a distraction from ill-health and thus reducing stress, depression and anxiety. However, the article raises questions over the ability of those without strong social networks, including no partner, and those with ongoing caring responsibilities (those who, it could be argued, are most in need of a holiday) to participate in the scheme.

Impact of care responsibilities on women’s employment: a comparison between European and East Asian welfare states

ABSTRACTWomen with care responsibilities tend to reduce their labour market activity and to work part time, even if there are cross-national differences. Empirical research often analyses this separately for childcare and elderly care, and studies are usually limited to Western societies. This article aims to explore to what extent women’s care responsibilities for children and older people impact on women’s labour market integration and how this impact differs in the context of different welfare states in Europe and Asia. The analysis is based on data from a new comparative survey for four cities (Jyväskylä, Hamburg, Bologna and Hsinchu) in four countries (Finland, Germany, Italy and Taiwan). While socio-economic and demographic factors (age, education, marital status, health, financial difficulty and cultural orientation) are considered, multinomial regression reveals that, concerning childcare, the differences are greater within Europe than between the European countries and the Asian welfare state included in the study. Moreover, it turns out that there is no association between caring for older relatives and female employment in any of the four societies. This study demonstrates that the impact of different types of care responsibilities on women’s employment shows different directions and conditions in the context of different welfare states.

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Combining Work and Care for an Older Parent in Italy

Given the growth of care needs, the emphasis on informal care and the increasing labour force participation of women and senior workers, balancing employment and elderly care responsibilities is a crucial challenge. This qualitative study explores how and with what implications Italian senior workers combine work with care for older people. The results indicate that the impact of care responsibilities on work is limited and that employment has a buffer effect on overwhelming care responsibilities. By contrast the implications for private and family life are considerable. The conditions and mechanisms that support these results are discussed.