Julia Johnson

The Quality of Care

Thus far, we have considered some of the features of continuity and change in the surviving homes and in the everyday lives of those living and working in them. A question that is frequently asked, however, is whether the homes today are better than they were in the past. In this chapter, therefore, we present our findings about the quality of care in the surviving homes then and now. The quality of care in the homes together with policy and practice regarding the registration and inspection of homes was one of Townsend’s key concerns. In the late 1950s, homes owned by the local authority were not subject to registration and inspection procedures. Voluntary and private homes, however, were required to be registered with, and inspected by, the local authority. However, Townsend found that for a variety of reasons some of the voluntary and private homes he visited were exempt; others had not been inspected for at least a year and some for more than five years. The quality of inspection was also mixed. Given some of the conditions found by Townsend, this situation was of considerable concern to him.

An evaluation of the use of diaries in a study of medication in later life

This paper is based upon our experience of commissioning diaries to be kept by research subjects. First the paper reviews some previous research based on diaries, then it outlines the aims of our research and the method of data collection. Then the paper goes on to evaluate the design and use of a diary that participants in our research completed. In particular we consider the ways in which the diary may have biased our sample, caused the participants difficulties and generated poor data. There is also a discussion on how it may have affected behaviour and on the ethical issues that are raised by commissioned diaries. In conclusion, observations are made about the strengths and weaknesses of diaries as an investigative tool with a wider applicability. The diary proved particularly revealing and we recommend that other researchers consider diaries as a method of investigating everyday life.

The Social Construction of ‘Carers’

In this chapter we trace the dramatic history of this concept and attempt to explain how it has acquired its statutory status. There are two distinct threads to this history: that of pressure groups seeking to improve the situation of those looking after disabled and older people, and that of researchers and policymakers who have been concerned to develop the policies and practices of service and support agencies. Both interest groups have focused primarily on the policies of central government and have frequently collaborated. Nevertheless, as will become apparent, their distinct interests have also generated tension in the course of the category of carer being constructed and promoted.

Valuing lives? Obituaries and the life course

This paper presents the outcome of a preliminary study of the various images of the life course that are conveyed in published obituaries. Following a review of recent developments in the obituary columns of national newspapers in the United Kingdom, we present our analysis of the 86 obituaries that were published in The Guardian in June 1995. We pay particular attention to the ways in which obituaries cover the biography, age, ill-health, death and personal relationships of the deceased. We conclude that, although the sampled obituaries as a whole feature the mid-life careers of men, they also reflect common expectations, fears and prejudices about age, illness and death. We would suggest that a more substantial study comparing obituaries in a wide range of contrasting publications and cultures would reveal important differences in dominant images of the life course.

Using photography to understand change and continuity in the history of residential care for older people

The Last Refuge by Peter Townsend is a seminal study of residential care for older people. The fieldwork was carried out in the late 1950s and the data are now deposited in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at the University of Essex. We have undertaken research, funded by the ESRC, which has revisited Townsends work and some of the homes he studied in order to conduct an overtime comparison. In this paper we focus on Townsends use of photography and our subsequent use of photography in our revisiting study. We argue that although Townsend did not analyse his photographs, they were significant data for use in his arguments critiquing residential care. They were, however, the product of a different socio‐historical context to our own and as such posed considerable practical and ethical challenges for us when attempting to use this aspect of his methodology for an overtime comparison. We argue that despite the resulting constraints, photography was an important part of our methodology, enabling comparisons and illuminating historical patterns in residential care for older people.

Uncovering History: Private Sector Care Homes for Older People in England

In conducting his research for The Last Refuge (1962), Peter Townsend visited 173 public, voluntary and private residential care homes for older people in England and Wales. Drawing on his data, now archived at the University of Essex, we traced the subsequent history of these homes and revisited a sample that were still functioning as care homes in 2006. In this article, we focus on the 42 private homes he visited, some of which remain open and were revisited by us in 2005–06. The pre-1980 history of private sector residential care provision for older people is an elusive and poorly charted topic. Drawing on the two data sets for then and now, this article contributes new insights into this area of UK policy and practice.

The Living Environment

In this chapter we address the question of what kind of living environments the 20 homes provided in the early 2000s and how they compare with the past. Forty years ago, Pincus adopted the term the ‘institutional environment’ which he defined as the psycho-social milieu in which the residents live as expressed through and/or generated by (a) physical aspects of the setting, including design, location, furnishing and equipment; (b) rules, regulations and program which govern daily life; and (c) staff behavior with residents.

People, pets and care homes: a story of ambivalence

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the history of pet ownership and its relationship to wellbeing in later life. In particular, the paper addresses the issue of pet ownership in communal residential settings for older people both now and in the past, comparing attitudes, policies, and practices in regard to pets in the late 1950s with the early years of the twenty‐first century.Design/methodology/approach – Following a review of the research literature on older people and companion animals, the paper draws on new data derived from recent research conducted by the authors. It compares archived material on the residential homes for older people that Peter Townsend visited in the late 1950s as part of his classic study, The Last Refuge (1962), with findings from revisiting a sample of these homes 50 years later. The authors employed the same methods as Townsend (observation together with interviews with managers and residents).Findings – The historical dimension of the research reveals ambival...

Older people “found dead” at home: challenges for the coroner system in England and Wales

Abstract This paper arises from current proposals to reform the Coroner Service in England and Wales. In it, we explore the extent to which inquests offer the opportunity to increase our understanding of the situation of older people who are “found dead.” This is a kind of death that might be categorized as a “bad death” and, as such, one that will involve the coroner. Research that has been conducted on older people who have been found dead indicates that coroners’ records are an inadequate source of information. We argue that this is because the system of death certification in England and Wales is focused on the medical cause of death. In consequence, the social circumstances surrounding those who are found dead remain unrecorded. We cannot judge therefore the extent or seriousness of this category of “bad deaths” nor whether social intervention in such cases might have been warranted. We further argue that proposals for reform, which were motivated in large part by the desire to improve the chances of detecting cases of concealed homicide as revealed by the Shipman Inquiry, have missed an opportunity to reconceptualize and broaden the role of the coroner in a way that would increase our knowledge and understanding of the circumstances surrounding other “bad deaths.”

The Social Worker Speaks: A History of Social Workers through the Twentieth Century . By David Burnham

converted to Islam, either by (relative) choice or under duress as part of a forced marriage to a Muslim Ottoman (a number of whom disclose how parts of the family remained Muslim and discouraged close ties with those who had returned to Christianity and to their Armenian identity, lest their neighbors find out that they were, in fact, Armenians, too). They also vary in age and, therefore, in their direct or indirect experience with the Armenian Genocide. This diversity among the interviewees is one aspect of Balancar’s book that makes it so critical: the story of Turkey’s Armenians is one that only recently has begun to emerge in Turkey. Given all that Balancar accomplishes with The Sounds of Silence, it is regrettable that the interviewees are not introduced more clearly throughout the text: Balancar does not provide people’s names, their specific ages, nor their gender, and the reader is left to guess and puzzle together “the identity” of the speaker (which is often difficult to do, given the number of family members and generations involved in these stories). Similarly, the reader is forced to guess what kinds of questions Balancar asked and to wonder about how these people were found and selected and under what circumstances they were interviewed. Nevertheless, this is an interesting book that documents not only the stories of the Armenians interviewed but also chronicles the change in attitude and awareness in Turkey at large since the assassination of Dink. With its secondary focus on 1915, it also represents a thought-provoking effort to offer new perspectives on one of the twentieth century’s most controversial events. Balancar quite aptly concludes her critical work by noting, “The death of Hrant Dink was not an end but a beginning, not only for society as a whole but also for the Armenians” (167).