Sociology
Ageing population, public expenditure cuts, privatisation of public services, economic migration, and scarcity of personnel in specialised institutions embody some of the most recent challenges that the Romanian system providing care to older people has had to deal with lately. Some aspects are symptomatic of a wider, global or regional phenomenon, while others seem specific to the Romanian context. By assuming that policies should result from public debates and consultations, a process generally called politicisation, this chapter questions various implications of politicising older people’s care. Thus, we focus, on one side, on the defining aspects of the older persons’ care system in Romania and, on the other, on the National Council of Pensioners’ and Older Persons’ Organisations (NCPOPO) as an agency for politicisation. Our analysis privileges an institutional approach, in which primary sources such as legislation, reports, and pieces of information from official websites, as well as secondary literature on older categories’ care in Romania, are equally relevant. Despite recent improvements, we argue that long-term care for older people in Romania keeps being challenged by formal-informal, public-private dichotomies related to care and gender-specific issues – care drain, low salaries, and family dynamics. In this specific context, NCPOPO plays multiple vital roles. Through a diverse repertory of actions, it simultaneously acts as a mediator, negotiator, generator of knowledge, and knowledge diffusion agent that seeks to make older people’s care a topic of politicisation.
Wales has increasingly become known for hugely popular, widely exported and award-winning TV and high-end TV productions. This success story is however overshadowed by high levels of precarity and inequality, which the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed further. The pandemic also revealed major shortcomings in how policymakers across the UK understand, recognise and support the screen sector and its freelance labour. Based on a series of interviews with freelancers, broadcasters, production companies and screen agencies, this chapter investigates the effect that the pandemic, lockdown and the subsequent support measures had on the screen sector in Wales. First, we argue that the pandemic exacerbated inequalities within the workforce, evidencing the fragility and precarity of an industry composed primarily of SMEs and freelancers. Second, we investigate the centrality of public service broadcasters in the Welsh audio-visual ecosystem of production and provision, highlighting the role of S4C as a minority-language broadcaster for a small nation. Third, we analyse the implications of the pivot to digital practices for workers, organisations and audiences. Finally, we conclude by highlighting some implications for policy, including the need to strike a balance between attracting external big budget productions and creating a sustainable Welsh media sector.
Like a growing number of countries around the world, Spain is experiencing a care crisis. This crisis is materialising in the breakdown of the traditional system of organisation and distribution of care work, generating enormous difficulties in providing and receiving care, and exposing the seams of gender and racial inequality that run through the care system. This chapter presents an analysis of long-term care policies in Spain over the last two decades following an approach that considers, in addition to policies, the social practices and discourses surrounding these policies. Special attention is paid to the main initiative developed in this respect in 2006 (Law 39/2006), as well as to the new challenges and policy discourses that have emerged as a result of the impact of the global pandemic. It is pointed out how the double anchoring of Spanish familism, structurally based on the elements of sexual division of labour and ideological preference for family care, has prevented and delayed the politicisation of the issue of care, and also encouraged the use of migrant women’s labour, leading to the development of global care chains. This contribution is framed within a critical social policy analysis that takes into special consideration the particular way in which gender and racial inequalities are articulated in the discourses that are conveyed when addressing issues related to long-term care policies.
This chapter describes how audiences and the wider UK population engaged with cultural content during the pandemic, in both live and digital spaces, and explores how their behaviours and attitudes are evolving as we emerge from the crisis. Firstly, the chapter presents, contextualises and discusses the findings of the Cultural Participation Monitor, a bespoke longitudinal tracking survey of the UK population that analysed changing digital engagement habits alongside attitudes towards re-engaging with live arts and related areas of cultural life. Secondly, the chapter investigates social media engagement during the pandemic via an analysis of Twitter data shared across two hashtags, #CultureInQuarantine and #MuseumAtHome. It explores engagement between cultural institutions and members of the public over this time, suggesting how cultural interaction may have shifted during the pandemic in ways that could be meaningful in the longer term. Above all, the chapter tells a story about the kinds of cultural content and interactions that people found valuable in a period of unprecedented uncertainty and anxiety. It concludes by reflecting on what appear to be longer-term trends in audience behaviour and engagement, and explores the implications of these trends for artists, cultural organisations, funders and policy-makers.
It is sometimes believed that in ‘the past’ few people lived to old age, so the care needs of older people are a modern issue. Or that in ‘the past’ or in other distant countries at present, older people were/are cared for by their families, whereas in contemporary Britain they are neglected and placed in care homes or live alone. In reality in all known past societies substantial numbers of people were defined as ‘old’, but often they did not have; have always preferred independent living when possible. When they needed care, richer older people were cared for by servants, and poorer people in charitable institutions or workhouses. From 1948, in the Welfare State, they had free health care under the National Health Service and local authorities provided residential homes and community services for means-tested fees. These improved until the 1970s, but were never perfect. More older people had, mainly female, relatives providing care, rather than public services, but more lived longer, needing specialised care, which families could not provide. In the 1980s public services deteriorated under a neoliberal government hostile to state welfare, which cut and privatised them. After some respite under a Labour government, 1997–2010, decline continued to the present, worsened by the Covid pandemic to which older people – their numbers still growing – were especially vulnerable. Relatives work hard to replace services, often putting themselves under great strain.
The chapter presents a case study of a senior centre/day-care centre in Bratislava as a subject of political debate on the communal level in the City Administrative District of Bratislava-Stare Mesto/Old Town. Its establishment in 1994 (connected with the then-unknown concept of active ageing) and its abolition in 2017 reflected the changes in the demographic situation in Slovakia and the resulting public policies of (paid) care for older people connected with its de-familisation and de-institutionalisation. The decision to replace the senior centre with a crèche pitted two age groups against each other, which made the public discussion about the persistence of the centre or its abolition extremely complicated. Thus, the closure of this institution represents an example of an ageist approach. However, the decision triggered a reaction that was unprecedented for Slovakia, initiated by the centre’s older adults themselves and the community concerned – challenging the idea of older people being passive and not interested in the res publica, in the sense of ageivism, as suggested by Israel Doron (2018). The data was collected via ethnographic research: participant observation and in-depth interviews with the centre's seniors, their relatives, personnel, and a broader community of neighbours (2017–2021). The bottom-up perspective is used to understand the impact of the wider public setting and public policies on the regimes of care for older citizens in an era of intense transformation when the roles of the family, the state, and the communities were being negotiated.
This chapter sets out to solve a double enigma: to explain why, in France, there is such a high level of invisibility in the help given to older adults by family carers and professional carers, and to understand the absence of a large-scale public policy on all aspects of the issue of old age. For the second half of the twentieth century, the French system of care for older adults was based on three pillars that cost the state very little: local public and private actors, families and relatives of the frail, and low-skilled and low-paid employees. The injunctions to use home care to limit costs had important consequences on women, as they were the main carers among their relatives. This situation has been invisible for a long time in statistics and sociology of the family approaches. From the 2000s onwards, a new phase began, in which public debates and public policies were developed in response to health crises and scandals, but the adoption of a major public policy was still postponed. However, this contribution shows that families were suspected of abdicating their responsibility towards their elder parents. Ultimately, the absence of an ambitious national political project can be explained by the fact that the approaches to care for older adults have been guided more by a desire to limit the costs of public finance instead of a real societal choice resulting from a debate amongst the French population on this issue.
This chapter looks at trends in the cultural workforce. Starting with the
enduring structural inequalities characteristic of the cultural sector in
the UK, it then examines how efforts to stop Covid-19 affected different
sub-sectors of the creative industries. The analysis reveals how each
sub-sector experienced different consequences: for example, increased demand
for working from home in publishing is contrasted with significant losses of
employment in performing arts. The impacts of the pandemic created different
dilemmas for the organisations, businesses and workers who constitute these
sub-sectors of the creative economy.
The analysis is illustrated by
several case studies. First, it shows what happened with overall employment
and work patterns in cultural occupations and industries, charting the
losses of jobs and hours across the sector and the impact on different
demographic groups in the workforce. Second, it pays particular attention to
freelancers, telling the story of the crisis in the performing arts where
freelancers struggled to get adequate government support. Third, it looks at
the impact of the government’s furlough scheme on jobs in the cultural and
creative industries. Fourth, it explores the impact of the pandemic on
trends in educational upskilling and retraining in the cultural workforce.
Finally, it explores the state of the cultural workforce as the sector
adjusts to the consequences of the pandemic. The chapter draws on secondary
analysis of Office for National Statistics datasets, including the Labour
Force Survey and the Business Impact of Covid Survey.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a broad, expansive role during a health emergency. Traditionally, the role of the WHO has been normative in nature, providing advice and guidance to member states on best practice during a health emergency. Despite this rather limited explicit legal mandate, the WHO does carry out a number of response functions during a health emergency that go beyond the normative, such as the procurement and delivery of medical supplies, and in some circumstances provides health services in a ‘boots on the ground’ manner. This chapter is concerned with the accountability of the WHO for the exercise of power during these ‘operational activities’. The chapter argues that at present there are limited control mechanisms over WHO operational activities during a health emergency. This is particularly apparent when the WHO operates through an external public-private partnership, such as COVAX, with this ultimately functioning to produce an additional layer of complexity with regards to the achievement of good governance.
This chapter throws a spotlight upon the rapid innovations achieved by arts and cultural organisations, from civic institutions to grass-roots enterprises, in response to COVID-19 in one specific city region, Liverpool. It explores the valuable lessons to be learned for practice and policy from the ways in which these novel solutions have stimulated a re-imagining of arts in mental healthcare in the aftermath of the pandemic. Liverpool City Region (LCR) has one of the richest concentrations of culture in the UK and a pioneering history of harnessing arts for mental health care. Yet, even before the current crisis, LCR had some of the poorest mental health outcomes in the country, and the highest concentration of adults seeking mental health services nationally. With the NHS increasingly overstretched, the role of arts and culture in providing stigma-free environments to re-connect the vulnerable and isolated, is more critical than ever. This chapter offers compelling case studies of the extraordinary adaptations to COVID-19 by arts organisations, their beneficiaries and health and social care providers. These dynamically responsive examples of regional arts-in-health innovations speak powerfully to a growing interest in understanding how a local arts-in-health infrastructure might contribute towards improved outcomes for individuals and communities. They also highlight our key finding and its relevance to the current levelling up agenda: the urgent priority of mobilising the transformative power of arts and culture for mental health and wellbeing needs through cooperative partnerships, co-ordinated programmes for social prescribing and targeted support for digital literacy.