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extensive experience in situations of human distress such as armed conflicts, epidemics and natural disasters in lower income countries – were completely unprepared to face a crisis of this magnitude. From the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the few certainties was that the risk of serious disease increased with age and comorbidities, therefore older residents in care homes would be particularly vulnerable. In these centres, many residents live together in closed spaces
The book advances our understanding of performance as a mode of caring and explores the relationship between socially engaged performance and care. It creates a dialogue between theatre and performance, care ethics and other disciplinary areas such as youth and disability studies, nursing, criminal justice and social care. Challenging existing debates in this area by rethinking the caring encounter as a performed, embodied experience and interrogating the boundaries between care practice and performance, the book engages with a wide range of different care performances drawn from interdisciplinary and international settings. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates, the edited collection examines how the field of performance and the aesthetic and ethico-political structures that determine its relationship with the social might be challenged by an examination of inter-human care. It interrogates how performance might be understood as caring or uncaring, careless or careful, and correlatively how care can be conceptualised as artful, aesthetic, authentic or even ‘fake’ and ‘staged’. Through a focus on care and performance, the contributors in the book consider how performance operates as a mode of caring for others and how dialogical debates between the theory and practice of care and performance making might foster a greater understanding of how the caring encounter is embodied and experienced.
3 Why care about carers? Claire Murray Introduction Rights are increasingly important in health law, both from a theoretical and a practical perspective. Respecting the autonomy and dignity rights of individuals should ultimately lead to more positive outcomes for people who engage with the health services because recognising them as rights subjects requires that they are treated with respect and their voices are listened to. Many of the chapters in this book are concerned with rights: identifying areas where rights have not been respected; teasing out how
‘What does “care” mean when we go about thinking and living interdependently with beings other than human’ in disabled worlds ( Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017 )? In what way do ‘things matter’ to the life of chronically ill and disabled individuals? What kind of ‘care arrangements’ do they enter into and make with the
On a most general level, we suggest that caring be viewed as a species activity that includes everything that we do to maintain, continue, and repair our ‘world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. (Fisher and Tronto, 1990 : 40) The origins of this chapter can be traced to 1990 and two disparate events: the redefinition of a feminist ethic of care by feminist political scientists Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto and a woman’s encounter with a roadworks scene. Where Carol Gilligan’s ( 1982 ) ethic of care challenged the universal morality of
, ‘his character’, mattered for creating a care relation as junior–senior with her. He never disrespected her, and he could always call her, and she would always respond to his needs. So when I have a little problem I call her: Ah! Old mother [ La veille mère ], your junior [ ton pétit ] there is in trouble you know, you have to give [a part of your resources to others as a gift]! [She says] okay, there's no problem, come and see me. What I need, she takes away [from what she has and she gives it to
This book presents a comprehensive account of a major innovation in hospital funding before the NHS. The voluntary hospitals, which provided the bulk of Britain’s acute hospital services, diversified their financial base by establishing hospital contributory schemes. Through these, working people subscribed small, regular amounts to their local hospitals, in return for which they were eligible for free hospital care. The book evaluates the extent to which the schemes were successful in achieving comprehensive coverage of the population, funding hospital services, and broadening opportunities for participation in the governance of health care and for the expression of consumer views. It then explores why the option of funding the post-war NHS through mass contribution was rejected, and traces the transformation of the surviving schemes into health cash plans. This is a substantial investigation into the attractions and limitations of mutualism in health care. It is relevant to debates about organisational innovations in the delivery of welfare services.
Healthcare aims to be patient-centred but a large gap remains between the fine words and the reality. Care often feels designed for the convenience of the organisations that deliver it, and not enough around patients and their families, or even around the frontline staff who provide it. Why does this happen? What does it feel like? What can be done about it? This book stimulates reflection on these questions by listening closely to those at the frontline. It provides accounts from patients, carers and healthcare professionals who are patients about what it’s like when services get it right, and wrong, from birth up to the end of life. Quite simply, we want to draw upon the power of storytelling – which is increasingly valued as a tool for learning – to help policymakers and practitioners to understand how to deliver better care. We also hope to enlighten the general reader about how they might go about navigating “the system” while it remains imperfect. There is a growing literature of first-person accounts from patients and from healthcare professionals. This book differs by providing a collection of narratives of experiences of the NHS in England to paint a rich and varied picture. Alongside these narratives we provide some international context, and an overview of the history of moves towards a more patient-centred approach to care. We present the theory and practice of storytelling in the context of healthcare. We also seek to help the reader to draw out the practical learning from the individual accounts.
Acting is a gateway to living more. (Zamir, 2014 : 17) The only hope we have of building societies that are peaceful and prosperous for all is to train the members of these societies to respond creatively, rather than fearfully, to the challenge of tradition versus progress, and to see all of the other members of different communities that make up this larger political society as engaged in variations on the same project. (Nicholls, 2012 : 5) This chapter suggests that reimagining the relationship between caregiver and cared for as one of
were drawn into the care of recovering soldiers, being seen to play a key role in the restoration of their morale and the transition from wounded soldier to civilian. The ‘affinity’, however, was not confined to the disabled child, or to the war, but is part of the history of girlhood and adolescence after the war. Girls often feature in representations of the recovery and care of disabled men