Catharina Nord

Individual care and personal space in assisted living in Sweden

This article presents a qualitative research project, which explores the relationship between individual care and personal space in assisted living in Sweden. The results were generated from 15-months of observational fieldwork and 22 individual interviews with staff members and ten residents. The research revealed two spatial levels significant to individual care practice: the higher level of architectural spatial configuration and the lower level of spatial micro-conditions. Inflexibility at the first level had to be compensated for by staff strategies at the second. Advantageous conditions at both levels offer a dynamic architectural situation to the staff, in which individual care may arise and thrive.

A day to be lived. Elderly peoples' possessions for everyday life in assisted living.

This study is a qualitative interview study about the household possessions that elderly women and men brought with them when moving into assisted living. The move implied a substantial reduction of their possessions since, in all cases, they had left a larger dwelling than the one they moved to. The study gives a glimpse into the everyday life of the oldest old in assisted living. The things the elderly participants brought were of three types; cherished objects, representations of who they were, and mundane objects. The most important objects indicated by the elderly often belonged to the third type, and were preferred for the significance they had for the everyday life of the individual. These objects revealed a circumscribed but dignified life in their private bed-sitting room, often in solitude, where the elderly individuals pursued various interests and small-scale activities. However, this life was organized and preferred by the individuals themselves, in accordance with the principles of resident autonomy and individual choice that are promoted in assisted living. The author suggests that these self-engaged pursuits can contribute to bridging the gap between disengagement and activity theories. The study results also contribute to making visible the private life of the oldest old in assisted living.

Ageing in people with intellectual disability as it is understood by group home staff

ABSTRACT Background The number of older residents in group homes for people with intellectual disability (ID) is increasing. This interview study was focused on how group home staff address issues of ageing and being old among people with ID. Method Twelve members of staff at 4 different group homes in Sweden were interviewed. Results Findings revealed old age as something unarticulated in the group home. Group home staff felt unprepared to meet age-related changes in residents. The study also revealed that group home staff had a one-tracked way of describing the process of ageing among people with ID, which was seemingly rooted in a medical paradigm of disability. Conclusion Based on this studys findings, we suggest that there is a need to raise issues and give guidance related to ageing and ID in disability policy documents to support the development of a formal culture that addresses old age and ID in disability services.

Ambiguous spaces for troubled youth: home, therapeutic institution or school?

In Sweden and elsewhere, students permanently excluded from school are removed from their local environment, and sometimes their parental home, and moved to a rural residential care home. Thus ‘home’ and ‘school’ are clearly considered places where problems exist, but it is the young people themselves who are scrutinised and subjected to change. This study examined how the change of place and the performance of the alternative ‘home’ and alternative ‘school’ affected student adjustment. It also explored the significance of place in these measures and questioned how possibilities for agency and subjectivities are produced. The work comprised an ethnographic study of two residential care homes for troubled youth (aged 12–15). The results show how complex assemblages produce opportunities and limitations for care and education and how location and buildings partake in the constitution of possible subjectivities and agency. The analysis, inspired by actor-network theory, captured mobility and flow, an important aspect when studying complexity. The analytical approach used enabled the complex arrangements for disadvantaged teenagers to be studied in terms of social interactions, but also of materiality.

Emergent Subjectivity in Caring Institutions for Teenagers.

We investigate how different mealtime situations help shape teenager and staff subjectivities in two Swedish residential care homes and a special school for girls and boys, 12–15 years old, with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Three mealtime networks are analysed using concepts from actor–network theory, treating architectural space and artefacts, as well as teenagers and staff, as actors. The architectural spaces in the kitchen and dining room were first created for other purposes than residential care for troubled youth (i.e. a former farm, hospital and preschool) and have been adapted to be more homelike while coping with housing and feeding 20 or more people. The original architectural spaces as well as activities before mealtimes were powerful actors in the mealtime network, causing different subjectivities to emerge in the translations. The subjectivities emerge in the first network as offenders/guards, in the second network as small children/nannies and in the third network as guests/service staff. The different translations in the three meal networks create different mobilization opportunities for the teenagers concerning responsibility and normality.

Healthcare and warfare. Medical space, mission and apartheid in twentieth century Northern Namibia

In the year 1966, the first government hospital, Oshakati hospital, was inaugurated in northern South-West Africa. It was constructed by the apartheid regime of South Africa which was occupying the territory. Prior to this inauguration, Finnish missionaries had, for 65 years, provided healthcare to the indigenous people in a number of healthcare facilities of which Onandjokwe hospital was the most important. This article discusses these two agents’ ideological standpoints. The same year, the war between the South-West African guerrillas and the South African state started, and continued up to 1988. The two hospitals became involved in the war; Oshakati hospital as a part of the South African war machinery, and Onandjokwe hospital as a ‘terrorist hospital’ in the eyes of the South Africans. The missionary Onandjokwe hospital was linked to the Lutheran church in South-West Africa, which became one of the main critics of the apartheid system early in the liberation war. Warfare and healthcare became intertwined with apartheid policies and aggression, materialised by healthcare provision based on strategic rationales rather than the people’s healthcare needs. When the Namibian state took over a ruined healthcare system in 1990, the two hospitals were hubs in a healthcare landscape shaped by missionary ambitions, war and apartheid logic.