‘Where do we come from and where are we going?’ A study about the transformation of knowledge related to long-term care

Abstract

The care crisis manifests the tensions and profound changes which are taking place in contemporary long-term care systems, leading to new care views and modalities in society. Through 26 interviews conducted with caregivers, family members and elderly people with care needs, this study aims to make visible the transformation in the conceptions of care in the Basque Country. First, the results show the displacement of familiarist ideas and values. Second, we describe the daily management of the social and moral tensions associated with outsourcing and the meaning of care work. Third, the findings indicate the emergence of new perspectives on the modalities of care. The contribution of cognitive polyphasia towards analysing the management and integration of new knowledge associated with care in a specific socio-cultural context is discussed. Finally, we consider the applicability of our findings in terms of relevant solutions for care management and innovation in this field.

Stemming the “ageism pandemic”: A qualitative inquiry with older adults in residential care facilities during the Covid-19 outbreak

“…Our focus is on the meanings that individuals attribute to their social worlds, particularly to aging, and the psychosocial processes that generate these meanings when they communicate with one another (Contarello and Romaioli, 2020). These meanings have been accepted as a result of shared and practical forms of social knowledge that are capable of producing concrete effects in the situated reality in which they develop (Jodelet, 2009) and are in movement, following a non-linear path, being cyclical and context dependent (Castelo et al, 2023). Even in times of Covid-19, if the people directly involved can tell alternative life stories—instead of those of aging seen as decline, and of the pandemic as a bearer of malaise—then the current negative representation amplified in the mass media could be eroded, making way for shared social discourses that, searching for a new normality (Emiliani et al, 2020), might help to deflect forms of negative self-perception and sabotage of the kind described above.…”