With ‘Ageing in Place’ as the dominant service model for care for older adults, older adults are encouraged to stay as long as possible in their own domestic settings. As carer strain soars amid rapid population ageing, communities are expected to be equipped with an increasingly wide range of support services, provided to the cared-for and increasingly informal carers of older adults in the community. Drawing upon an exploratory study on informal care provision for older adults in Hong Kong, this paper attends to how informal carers are constructed and represented in the neoliberalist policy discourses. Representations of carers, carers’ needs and their relationships with the cared-for are examined. Observations are juxtaposed with findings of how carers understand their role and make sense of the identity of ‘carers’. It is argued that informal carers’ understandings and experiences of their care provision as embedded in social (predominantly family) relationships do not easily reconcile with the policy’s consumerist focus on choices and self-directed care. This paper reflects on what these findings mean for a neoliberalist welfare context that strives to be both ‘elderly-friendly’ and ‘carer-friendly’. Implications for old age care policy and carer support services are drawn.

Authors:
Beatrice Oi-yeung Lam, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong
Wai-leung Chan, Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Hong Kong

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Beatrice Lam is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Hong Kong Metropolitan University in Hong Kong

See this presentation on the full schedule – Friday Schedule

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