Documents informal care 17 results

"With worker shortages and the need for care workers projected to grow, personal care work through digital labour platforms (DLPs) is important to understand. This paper considers DLPs used by gig care workers providing personal care in Ontario, Canada. We recruited 20 women gig care workers for interviews. We examined socio-technical processes such as signing up on platforms, creating profiles, and searching for jobs. We draw on Institutional Ethnography to study the actual work on the following two DLP models: marketplace and on-demand. Marcusean theory provides a lens for the critical examination of DLP care work. We found job inequity between DLPs operating in the homecare sector, compared to DPs used in institutional settings. Jobs had disparate quality between the two platform types. Workers on both DLP types remained vulnerable to fluctuations in demand and had limited social security protections, and both models of DLP institutionalised precarity."

"Research on single mothers' employment overwhelmingly focuses on the importance of access to formal childcare at a single point in time. However, to understand the relationship between childcare and single mothers' employment we must consider their access to and use of multiple forms of childcare – their childcare packages – and how these change over time. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative study and employing the concepts of ‘caringscapes' and ‘work-time/childcare-time', this article highlights how childcare packages shape single mothers' employment trajectories. Informal carers play a crucial role within mixed (formal and informal) childcare packages in helping mothers bring children's needs, work-time and childcare-time into alignment, thus strengthening their employment trajectories. Informal carers achieve this effect by: (1) increasing the total hours of non-parental care; (2) ‘gluing' together complex jigsaws of care; (3) offering a ‘safety net' in times of crisis; and (4) playing a ‘connector' role during employment transitions."

"At the beginning of the twenty-first century, intergenerational relations remain a key aspect of the future development and sustainability of the European social model. In the present paper, patterns of intergenerational support and the main driving factors behind individuals' transfer behavior are explored. In particular, the data form the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe are utilized to shed light on the main factors behind the likelihood and intensity of social support, and financial help provided to and received from other family members by ageing and elderly Europeans. The analysis also takes into consideration patterns and factors correlated with grandparenting activities. Finally, special attention is devoted to the condition of those individuals who are sandwiched between care obligations toward their elderly parents and young adult children. It is shown that the likelihood of the exchange of support between family generations is highest in Scandinavian countries and lowest in Southern Europe. The intensity of support follows an opposite North-South gradient. In addition, relevant gender-related inequalities are documented. In general, time-demanding support obligations are more likely to fall on the shoulders of women in the early stage of their later life, while mainly benefitting elderly men."

"Macroeconomic downturns can have both an important impact on the availability of informal care and the affordability of formal long-term care. This paper investigates how the demand for and provision of informal care changed during and after the Great Recession in Europe. We use data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), which includes a rich set of variables covering waves before and after the Great Recession. We find evidence of an increase in the availability of informal care and a reduction in the use of formal health services (doctor visits and hospital stays) after the economic downturn when controlling for year and country fixed effects. This trend is mainly driven by changes in care provision of individuals not cohabiting with the care recipient. We also find a small negative association between old-age health (measured by the number of problems with activities of daily living) and crisis severity. The results are robust to the inclusion o f individual characteristics, individual-specific effects and region-specific time trends."

"Les politiques de la prise en charge de la dépendance sont à l'origine de la construction d'un champ d'activité qui n'a jamais été défini formellement, mais qu'elles structurent par leurs prescriptions. Ce cadre réglementaire contribue à faire émerger une certaine définition de l'aide à domicile qui n'est pas toujours en adéquation avec les besoins des personnes en perte d'autonomie. Il ne permet notamment pas la prise en charge d'activités moins traditionnellement considérées comme de « l'aide à domicile » et écarte, par construction, les hommes. Si, au niveau des tâches constitutives de l'aide au maintien à domicile, les hommes participent au sein de la sphère familiale, il semblerait qu'ils s'excluent ou soient exclus de l'aide professionnelle. À partir d'une enquête statistique exploratoire et d'entretiens ethnographiques, nous montrons les processus d'exclusion des hommes et l'adaptation de l'activité exercée par ceux qui néanmoins investissent ce secteur professionnel."

"Against the background of an ageing society with an increasing demand for informal caregivers, this study examines (1) to what extent informal caregiving is negatively related to well-being, (2) to what extent the relationship between informal caregiving and well-being varies over countries and (3) to what extent national policies and countries' normative climates reduce the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers. Analyses on the European Quality of Life Survey 2007 (N?=?20,396 in 18 countries), applying multilevel regression techniques, confirmed previous findings that caregivers have lower levels of well-being than non-caregivers. This relationship varied between countries. Generous availability of formal long-term resources reduces the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers. Surprisingly, services that are designed to support informal caregivers do not alleviate the negative well-being consequences. A strong country-level family norm does not affect the well-being gap between caregivers and non-caregivers, but reduces the negative well-being consequences of intensive caregiving."

"La storia delle politiche migratorie italiane degli ultimi trent'anni è una storia di fallimenti. Malgrado il rafforzamento dei controlli e l'inasprimento delle sanzioni, in venticinque anni sono state approvate sette leggi di sanatoria, più altre misure di regolarizzazione non dichiarata, come i decreti flussi. I fabbisogni di manodopera per l'assistenza degli anziani a domicilio sono una delle ragioni principali di questo insuccesso regolativo. Donne e anche uomini immigrati sono sempre più coinvolti nella fornitura di servizi di cura nei paesi del Nord globale. Nei paesi del Sud Europa, ma in misura crescente anche in paesi come l'Austria e la Germania, il lavoro di cura degli immigrati è incorporato in uno specifico care regime: è svolto principalmente presso il domicilio degli assistiti, spesso sulle 24 ore, in coabitazione, in modo da puntellare un sistema in cui la famiglia rimane il luogo centrale delle cure per le persone in condizioni di fragilità. In secondo luogo, impiega un ampio numero di lavoratori in condizione irregolare sotto il profilo contrattuale e spesso anche dello status legale. L'articolo presenta i risultati di varie ricerche sul tema condotte in Italia nell'arco di un decennio (2002-2012). Discute come l'immigrazione irregolare è di fatto tollerata, quando è inserita al servizio dei crescenti bisogni delle famiglie autoctone; come funziona il sistema definito "welfare parallelo"; e come le assistenti familiari immigrate trovano possibilità di agency, malgrado i vincoli normativi e lo sfruttamento che spesso subiscono."

"We analyze the relationship between health and the double burden of both informal care provision and full-time work using administrative data from the second biggest German sickness fund. We have information on more than 7000 caregivers over a period of three years and apply linear panel data and two-part models. As outcome measures we use detailed information on the prescription of five types of drugs. We find that individuals who provide care and also work full-time have a significantly higher consumption of antidepressant drugs and tranquilizers than those who work only. This is mostly driven by an increase in the extensive margin of drug intake."

"I discuss instrumental variable estimates of the effect of providing unpaid adult care on the caregivers' probability of being employed, using eight waves of the European Community Household Panel. I focus on men aged 40–64 and women aged 40–59 from thirteen Member States, aggregated in two groups of Northern-Central and Southern countries. Previous papers with European data found that IV estimates are more negative than estimates assuming exogeneity of caregiving. I show that this difference is not robust once account is taken of time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity. Indeed, instruments turn out not to be needed, and the estimated effect is negative, but small in both groups of countries."

"Insurance for long-term care (LTC) has developed only moderately compared to other areas of welfare, which has been explained variously as the result of market failures, public misconceptions of the risk of LTC needs, and intergenerational contracts. This paper offers a cultural explanation for the limited LTC insurance development in Europe. It argues that family ties, by enhancing informal care-giving duties, inhibit individuals' expected (public and private) insurance coverage. The empirical analysis of the paper exploits cross-country and sub-group variability of a representative database of European Union member states, containing records on LTC coverage and family structure. Drawing upon two measures of familistic culture or family ties, we find a negative association between family ties and expected coverage of LTC for different sub-samples. These results are robust to a set of checks for different definitions of family ties and controls, and for a sub-sample of first- and second-generation migrants. Policy implications suggest that widespread expansion of LTC coverage might need to accommodate existing familistic cultural norms to avoid insurance crowding out."