Editorial: Recognising new partners and activities in older peoples’ care but also potential burdens in new forms of care and research

Citation

Poland, F.M. (2023), "Editorial: Recognising new partners and activities in older peoples’ care but also potential burdens in new forms of care and research", Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 125-126. https://doi.org/10.1108/QAOA-12-2023-097

Recognising new partners and activities in older peoples’ care but also potential burdens in new forms of care and research

What can constitute care partnerships with older people continually and rapidly transforms with the social, economic and technological changes we live through. Research and policy need to recognise who and what may be the new partners in providing older peoples’ care but also to anticipate what corresponding potential burdens they can bring to older people and carers in implementing and also in researching care.

Social care is becoming ever more pressured as older people are supported to live at home with increasing numbers of chronic conditions but where there are fewer people in their support networks to provide personal care, especially at night. Boyle’s scoping review identifies both how limited research is on these issues, then highlights the importance of and a potentially innovative role for domiciliary night care staff in the UK and the considerable variety of findings now emerging from a range of local programmes which provide such services. Their findings are used to indicate emerging models of care in this area and suggesting the need for research to compare outcomes for private and state provision and the potential for scaling up.

What language communities are contributing to older peoples’ care need to be recognised if care partnerships are to be properly supported. Within every society there are many people who will be Deaf Sign Language (DSL) users, and some of these will be carers for partners or parents living with dementia. Research in this area in the UK is being led by Ferguson-Coleman and their research with Young reported here has identified how little the needs of DSL users who are carers has been identified. This oversight is therefore reflected in the language and forms of support provided by those social care structures which might be expected to support informal carers in this area. This means that the risk of isolation for this group becomes particularly acute. These researchers have carried out a unique interview study with a purposive sample of seven deaf carers at home using monolingual British Sign Language (BSL), to explore their experiences of caring, working from home during pandemic lockdown, and video-recorded, translated from BSL to English, then analysed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Their findings highlighted the importance of establishing cultural competence through training and appropriate interpreter support for the health needs of deaf carers and their responsibilities to be recognised and addressed and for adequate safety nets to be provided.

Another group of older people for whom a pre-existing weight of exclusion is becoming even more acute is that of prisoners who, are, as in wider society, becoming older and where, by definition, the possibility of alleviating mental health problems related to isolation cannot be provided through widening social networks. Pet therapy involving dogs may offer a different way to help build relationships, strengthen memories and even prepare for life at home or in employment after time in prison. Codd’s UK-based research through literature review and expert interviews on the range of therapy interventions involving dogs have been attempted with older people in settings relevant to prison. This indicates what kinds of such work may be feasible and also uses findings to guide planning for further related interventions and research, on conceptual, psychological, practical and ethical issues including the assessment of people and the health and safety implications of proposals for participants including for the canine participants.

Actually becoming involved in research and service improvement has been identified as a potential burden leading to distinct pressures for participants (May et al., 2023). Toms and Seddon et al. have noted that while in the UK unpaid carers and those they care for may especially benefit from short breaks, their needs for such breaks are usually assessed through Carers’ Assessments. During these assessments, additional pressures of time, and a range of challenges of time, preparedness, lack of knowledge of potential options for breaks or of routine support to consider their own needs, or cognitive, sensory or communication challenges may make it difficult for unpaid carers to use Carers’ Assessment meetings to explore their needs for short breaks. The authors report on a study to use images to support short break conversations, as these might help mitigate such challenges. Their study involved applying a Social Care Innovation Labe (#SCIL) approach, online stakeholder involvement events co-supported by the Developing Evidence Enriched Practice (DEEP) programme, to broaden views of options and deliberate emergent findings. The findings helped encourage and inform further exploration of using images in short break conversations while also identifying both facilitators and also areas where potential challenges would need to be addressed.

Even just these four articles have introduced elements of care and research (and means of inclusion in research) which, a few decades ago, would not have been considered as part of acceptable or necessary care. Domiciliary night staff or people using BSL may have rarely been attended to as part of mainstream caring. The role of animals including dogs is unlikely to have been imagined as therapeutic partners. Similarly, finding ways to encourage unpaid carers short of time or literacy skills to articulate their support needs may well have been overlooked. The role of research in fully informing those concerned with quality in ageing can be seen here to enable closer attention to identifying ways to acknowledge these previously-unseen components of better living and caring.