Addressing ethnicity in social care research
by Tom Vickers
co-authored with Gary Craig and Karl Atkin, published by Social Policy and Administration, 2012. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00851.x
This article surveys recent developments in relation to the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnic disadvantage in social... more This article surveys recent developments in relation to the dimensions of ethnicity and ethnic disadvantage in social policy research and practice, with a focus on social care. While there has been limited increase in attention to ethnicity within general policy discussion and increasing sophistication within specialist debates, advances in theory and methodology have largely failed to penetrate the mainstream of research, let alone policy or practice. This is a long standing problem. We argue for a more focussed consideration of ethnicity and ethnic disadvantage at all levels. Failure to do so creates the risk of social policy research being left behind in understanding rapid changes in ethnic minority demographics and patterns of migration, and increasing disadvantage to minorities.
Giuntoli, G., Cattan, M. (2012) The experiences and expectations of care and support among older migrants in the UK, 15(1), pp. 131-147.
Special issue: Older people and migration: Challenges for social work.
This paper reports and critically discusses, against the literature on culturally sensitive and cultural competency... more This paper reports and critically discusses, against the literature on culturally sensitive and cultural competency practices, the findings of a qualitative study which explored the needs and expectations of older people and their carers from eight different migrant communities and the white British majority. The study investigated the accessibility and acceptability of care and support services in Bradford, UK, a city with a large migrant population. A total of 167 study participants were recruited from February 2008 to October 2008; of these 134 were older people and 33 carers. The age ranged from 25 to 90 years. The study found that older migrants and their carers described expectations of services as complex constructions of 'abstract expectations', the study participants' general beliefs regarding what services should be about, and 'pragmatic expectations', their specific views about how they would like to receive care and access services. All groups, irrespective of their ethnic background, expressed three 'abstract expectations': high standards of good practice; cultural understanding; and responsiveness to individual expectations. This similarity did not imply a similarity in their preferences for how services should provide for their 'abstract expectations'. Dignity was a central expectation for all older people in the care of their bodies. However, a number of culturally specific 'pragmatic expectations' emerged in the practices that older people and carers associated with maintaining dignity in older age. Nevertheless, differences could not always be explained as an outcome of different cultural backgrounds, but were rather linked to individual characteristics and life experiences. This study indicates that whether and how older migrants' knowledge systems inform their expectations of care and support should be objects of investigation rather than taken for granted, as implied in some literature on culturally sensitive practices. Exploration of older migrants' knowledge systems may help us to understand if older migrants' expectations differ with regard to what they expect to receive from a certain service, their 'abstract expectations', and/or how they expect to receive it, their 'pragmatic expectations'. This information should help to identify if different communities require different culturally competent interventions and of what type: interventions at the organisational level, at the structural level or at the clinical level.
Neo-Liberal individualism or self-directed support: are we all speaking the same language on modernising adult social care?
This article explores recent developments in the modernisation of adult social care through the lens of changes to... more This article explores recent developments in the modernisation of adult social care through the lens of changes to English day services. Drawing on wider policy debates, it argues that Disabled Peoples' Movement and governmental ideas on self-directed support, although superficially similar, are growing increasingly apart. It is argued that in the absence of adequate funding and exposure to organisations of disabled people, day service recipients risk moving from a position of enforced collectivism to an enforced individualism characteristic of neo-liberal constructions of economic life.
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Download (.pdf) Kinship in the Past Tense: Language, Care and Cultural Memory in a Mexican Community
MA paper in linguistic anthropology, 2012, Brown University.
The community of San Jeronimo Acazulco, Mexico State, Mexico is in the process of drastic social change, in which... more The community of San Jeronimo Acazulco, Mexico State, Mexico is in the process of drastic social change, in which patterns of both social organization and of language are shifting. The indigenous Otomí language is the first language of the senior generation, while the rest of the community speaks only Spanish. I show how the use of the Otomí language has come be associated with the community's past to the extent that every time the language is used it indexes a set of ideologies and narratives about the past. Using the Bakhtinian concept of the chronotope, I show how the Otomí language has become indexical of an ideology of relatedness and kinship associated with the past (the Ndõngũ chronotope), and how speakers draw on the chronotope to perform social and communicative functions in the present. I argue that in this way elderly Otomí speakers use the Otomí language to place demands of care on the younger generations, by contrasting contemporary patterns of sociality with those of the past.
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Care (and) circulation revisited: a conceptual map of diversity in transnational parenting
Co-authored with Paolo Boccagni, forthcoming in the book "Transnational families, migration and kin-work: from care chains to care circulation", edited by Loretta Baldassar and Laura Merla, Routledge.
The ethical politics of well-being in English care homes for adults with intellectual disabilities
by Michael Dunn
Dunn, M., Clegg, J., Clare, I. and Holland, A. (under review) 'The ethical politics of well-being in English care homes for adults with intellectual disabilities'.
ABSTRACT
Contemporary approaches to conceptualising good practice in residential care settings in England... more
ABSTRACT
Contemporary approaches to conceptualising good practice in residential care settings in England have focused on how the support environment functions to respect residents’ autonomy and to improve their quality of life. Increasingly, empirical and theoretical enquiry is exposing how the everyday practices of care work render problematic the ways in which this focus has been operationalised in practice, particularly with regards to autonomy-related considerations. This paper develops this emerging strand of research, exploring how support worker providing residential care to adults with intellectual disabilities make sense of the ethical dimensions of their support role. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of twenty-one interviews with support workers employed in residential care homes, and extended observations of care practices in these settings, it is shown how support workers identify, and negotiate, a particular account of good care. It is argued that day-to-day life in care homes is characterised by an ‘ethical politics of well-being’ as support workers define, defend, and seek to enact strategies for enhancing the quality of residents’ everyday lives in ways that are subject to continual challenge within the care home environment. These findings provide an insight into the complex ethical character of long-term care, and pose a number of challenges to contemporary political and regulatory frameworks of good practice across a range of health and social care settings.
"I remember thinking, why isn't there someone to help me. Why isn't there someone who can help me make sense of what I'm going through": 'Instant Adulthood' and the Transition of Young People out of State Care
by Ruth Rogers
Rogers, R. (2011) "I remember thinking, why isn't there someone to help me. Why isn't there someone who can help me make sense of what I'm going through": 'Instant Adulthood' and the Transition of Young People out of State Care, in Journal of Sociology, Dec 2011 47(4), pp. 411-426
Recent years has seen a shift away from youth transitions being understood as a linear progression towards... more Recent years has seen a shift away from youth transitions being understood as a linear progression towards conventional goals. Instead, it is now argued that youth transitions tend to be highly chaotic, often involving non linear and fragmented movement between dependence and independence. However, this article discusses how young people leaving the state care system are seldom afforded the luxury of a more gradual and non-linear transition. Instead, for them, the possibilities of adult futures remain marked by chronic and continuing exclusion as they move abruptly into ‘instant adulthood’, with no opportunity to return to the child welfare system should they find themselves unable to make it on their own. Drawing from findings of 30 in-depth interviews with young care leavers, social workers and further and higher education institutions in the UK, the article considers the personal experiences of young people leaving state care, including their own sense of fallibility and personal identity.
The ethics of long-term care practice: A global call to arms
by Michael Dunn
Hope, T. and Dunn, M. (under review). 'The ethics of long-term care practice: A global call to arms'.
SUMMARY
A paper that describes the different types of ethical issues that arise in the day-to-day... more
SUMMARY
A paper that describes the different types of ethical issues that arise in the day-to-day activities that constitute long-term care, and that argues that there need to be processes and interventions established at the local, national and international level to enable these issues to be addressed appropriately.
ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the practical ethical issues that arise in long-term care settings. Our attention focuses predominantly on the care provided to people with dementia, a condition which is expected to present a major challenge to countries around the world over the next few decades. By providing specific examples, we show how the bulk of problematic ethical issues arise in the context of day-to-day care practices, and consider how these issues become even more problematic when recent developments in transnational migration for the purposes of providing and receiving long-term care are taken into account. We argue, first, that that these ethical issues need to be addressed in ways that can command broad agreement across different cultures and, second, that whilst contemporary approaches to identify universal principles ought to be part of this process, these principles alone will be insufficient to foster ethical practice. Our claim is that there need to be processes at both the macro and micro level that can facilitate discussion around, and enable the resolution of, context-specific ethical challenges. Such processes will require international collaboration between academic, policy-makers and care providers, and will involve new interventions in practical settings.
Understanding paid care work-towards a new critique
Manchester University Occasional Papers Series, No.43
Published
01/07/1995
Publisher
University of Manchester,Department of Sociology
ISBN
9780946180424
Constructing and reconstructing ‘best interests’: An interpretative examination of substitute decision-making under the Mental Capacity Act 2005
by Michael Dunn
Dunn, M., Clare, I., Holland, A. and Gunn, M. (2007) ‘Constructing and reconstructing ‘best interests’: An interpretative examination of substitute decision-making under the Mental Capacity Act 2005’, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 29(2): 117-133.
SUMMARY
An outline of the conceptual and procedural problems in integrating established common law... more
SUMMARY
An outline of the conceptual and procedural problems in integrating established common law principles for surrogate decision-making into a new legal statute applicable across a range of health and welfare settings.
ABSTRACT
The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) authorises substitute decision-making in England and Wales, in relation to ‘acts in connection with care or treatment’, for a person lacking the capacity to make an autonomous decision, if it is both necessary and in his or her ‘best interests’ to do so. The approach adopted by the MCA is consistent with the common law, but widens both the scope and procedures of a ‘best interests’ determination to allow for a general model of substitute decision-making in everyday health and social care. However, by decontextualising substitute decision-making, the MCA’s procedures relating to ‘best interests’ may prove to be problematic in three ways: first, by failing to adequately resolve certain ethical dilemmas that pervade this area; second, by reducing applied substitute decision-making to a series of compulsory generalised instructions; and, finally, by necessitating deliberation but offering little practical guidance to the process of determination. Whilst the codification of five statutory principles in the MCA is designed to foster the empowerment of vulnerable adults, the realisation of these procedural and conceptual problems may have a negative impact on the implementation of the MCA.
To empower or to protect? Constructing the ‘vulnerable adult’ in English law and public policy
by Michael Dunn
Dunn, M., Clare I. and Holland, A. (2008) ‘To empower or to protect? Constructing the ‘vulnerable adult’ in English law and public policy’, Legal Studies, 28(2): 234-253.
SUMMARY
A brief examination of the concept of vulnerability, and a critical analysis of its inclusion and... more
SUMMARY
A brief examination of the concept of vulnerability, and a critical analysis of its inclusion and interpretation in legal and political discourse for the purpose of justifying interventions in adults' everyday lives.
ABSTRACT
Recent judgments in England and Wales have confirmed and extended the High Court’s inherent jurisdiction to make declarations about interventions into the lives of ‘vulnerable’, rather than simply ‘mentally incapacitated’ adults. We argue that this shift is problematic because of the ways that the ‘vulnerable adult’ has been constructed in order to justify such interventions. The accounts of vulnerability drawn upon in the constructive process highlight the person’s inherent characteristics and/or the circumstances within which that person might be denied the ability to make a free choice. Such an approach parallels the public policy protection of ‘vulnerable adults’from abuse in care services and the statutory protection of ‘vulnerable witnesses’in the criminal justice system, and is built on an external and objective assessment of being ‘at risk’, rather than an understanding of the subjective experience of being vulnerable. We argue that this imbalance might act to disempower the ‘vulnerable adult’ by reducing that person’s life to a series of risk factors that fail, first, to place him/her at the heart of the decision to intervene, and, secondly, to engage adequately with the experiences through which that person ascribes meaning to his/her life.