Bettina Cass

The marketisation of care: rationales and consequences in Nordic and liberal care regimes

The use of markets and market mechanisms to deliver care services is growing in both liberal and social democratic welfare states. This article examines debates and policies concerning the marketisation of eldercare and childcare in Sweden, England and Australia. It shows how market discourses and practices intersect with, reinforce or challenge traditions and existing policies and examines whether care markets deliver user empowerment and greater efficiency. Markets for eldercare and childcare have developed in uneven and context specific ways with varying consequences. Both politics and policy history help to shape market outcomes.

So that's How I Found out I Was a Young Carer and that I Actually Had Been a Carer Most of My Life. Identifying and Supporting Hidden Young Carers.

A common theme in the literature on care-giving is the issue of ‘hidden’ carers, that is, people who undertake caring roles and responsibilities, yet do not identify themselves as carers. One reason people do not recognise themselves as carers relates to the nature of the caring relationship. When providing care for a family member, intra-familial bonds of love and reciprocity do not encourage parties to view the relationship as anything other than a ‘normal’ familial relationship. The lack of self-identification amongst young carers is complicated further by societal norms surrounding care-giving. Whereas adults are expected to provide care to other adults and children, young people are not expected to be care-givers but rather care recipients. As a result, many young carers remain ‘hidden’ and beyond the reach of services and supports designed to help them in their caring role. This paper draws on qualitative research with young carers and service providers to explore the issue of self-identification amongst young carers. The paper concludes with recommendations for identifying and supporting hidden young carers.

Voice and choice for users and carers? developments in patterns of care for older people in Australia, England and Finland

This article identifies key trends over the last 20 years in residential and community care for older people in England, Finland and Australia, investigating the extent of ‘de-institutionalisation’, ‘privatisation’ and ‘individualisation’. The concepts of collective and individual ‘voice’ and ‘choice’ are used to interrogate the roles of collective and individual actors, older people and carers, in influencing policy formulation. While these three processes have been pursued by policy-makers in each country, their implementation is illuminated by understanding how ‘voice’ and ‘choice’ have been operationalised – individually and collectively – in each context. In the reshaping of eldercare in the three states, the analysis identifies the greater influence of claims-making by family carers, who provide the informal bastion of formal care services in the push to de-institutionalisation, in comparison with the collective and individual voices of older people as ‘service users’.

Information provision to grandparent kinship carers: responding to their unique needs

Abstract Grandparent kinship care is a growing policy concern in Australia. Availability of appropriate, timely, and up-to-date information on payments and allowances, support services, and childrens needs, is an important factor in determining whether grandparent carers, and the children in their care, receive the support they need. While it is known that custodial grandparents in Australia have trouble gaining access to information and support, relatively little attention has been paid to the causes of this difficulty. Drawing from interviews with 55 service providers and policy makers from New South Wales, South Australia, and the Northern Territory, this article identifies two salient issues: the characteristics of this group, which results in special communication and information needs; and the difficulties grandparent-headed families face due to their unique relationship to the state.

Some Thoughts On Reading Norman Blaikie's—: 'The Meaning and Measurement of Occupational Prestige'

Bierstedt, Robert 1977 ’Review essay on New Rules of Sociological Method’. Scottish Journal of Sociology, 1 (April): 183-193. Blaikie, Norman W. H. 1977 ’The meaning and measurement of occupational prestige’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 13 (June): 102-115. Broom, Leonard, P. Duncan-Jones, F. Lancaster Jones and Patrick McDonnell 1977 Investigating Social Mobility. Canberra: Department of Sociology, R.S.S.S., Australian National University. Departmental Monograph No. 1. Jones, F. Lancaster 1974 ’Social stratification in Australia: an overview of a research program’. Social Science Information, 13 (No. 1): 99-118. Koestler, Arthur 1972 The Call Girls. London: Hutchinson & Co. Shils, E. A. 1961 ’Centre and periphery’. Pp. 117-130 in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi on his Seventieth Birthday. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Worsley, Peter. 1974 ’The state of theory and the status of theory’. Sociology, 8 (Jan.): 1-17.

Capturing the centrality of age and life-course stage in the provision of unpaid care

The purpose of this article is to construct a new theoretical framework of care-giving that places age, and the life-course stage of carers, at the centre of conceptual understanding and analysis. Although care theory is heavily gendered, it pays far less attention to age differences among the diverse participants in care-giving. This article argues that the age and life-course stage of carers is central to differential pathways into care-giving, experiences of care-giving, and effects of care-giving in the present and future. To support this, the article draws on qualitative data from a study on the circumstances and experiences of Australian children and young people who provide care for family members with disability or chronic illness. Claiming that theories of care are incomplete if age differences, intersecting with gender and other socio-demographic differences, are not treated as central to the conceptualization, the article outlines a framework for an age-sensitive theory of care-giving.