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Series editors' preface
- Catherine Needham, University of Birmingham, Patrick Hall, University of Birmingham
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- Book:
- Social Care in the UK's Four Nations
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 27 April 2023, pp vi-vii
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Summary
This book series arises from the Sustainable Care: connecting people and systems research programme delivered by a multidisciplinary partnership of 35 scholars in eight universities, funded by a UK Economic and Social Research Council Large Grant. It offers novel, internationally-informed interdisciplinary contributions based on work by linked research teams studying care systems, care work and care relationships.
The focus of the book series is timely and important. We hope it will inform and inspire scholars, policymakers, employers, practitioners and citizens interested in care. Books in the series offer new empirical, conceptual and methodological writing, in scholarly but accessible form, and aim to make an innovative and distinctive contribution to understandings of care challenges and how these can be addressed.
The books bring together data, practices, systems, structures, narratives and actions relevant to social care. Some relate specifically to the UK's unique policy, demographic, cultural and socio-economic circumstances, but all have clear global relevance. Similar concerns are salient around the world, especially in other advanced welfare states, where population ageing is profoundly changing age structures; developments in technology and healthcare mean more people who are ill or have long-term conditions need support at home; and ‘traditional’ gendered sources of daily caring labour are dwindling, as levels of female labour force participation rise, and family networks become more dispersed. The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified all these challenges.
Subject areas, disciplines and themes
The series critically engages with crucial contemporary debates about care infrastructure; divisions of caring labour and the political economy of care; care ethics, rights, recognition and values; care technologies and humantechnological interactions; and care relations in intergenerational, emotional, community and familial context. Within its overarching concept, sustainable care, its subject areas span social and welfare policy and systems; family and social gerontology; ageing and disability studies; employment and workforce organisation; diversity (including gender and ethnicity); social work and human resources; migration and mobility; and technology studies.
The new multi-disciplinary work on care we offer embraces progress in global scholarship on diversity, culture and the uses of technology, and engages with issues of inequality, political economy and the division of labour.
Technology and homecare in the UK: Policy, storylines and practice
- Kate Hamblin, Diane Burns, Cate Goodlad
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- Journal:
- Journal of Social Policy , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 13 April 2023, pp. 1-17
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- Article
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- You have access Access
- Open access
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UK policy discourse presents technology as a solution to challenges facing care services, including issues of quality and the mismatch between care workforce supply and demand. This discourse characterises technology as ‘transformative’, homogenous and wholly positive for care delivery, eliding the diversity of digital devices and systems and their varied uses. Our paper draws on data gathered through 34 interviews with care sector stakeholders and four in-depth case studies of UK homecare providers to comparatively analyse ‘storylines’ of technological solutions expressed by policy (macro-level), sector stakeholders (meso-level) and homecare managers and care workers (micro-level) alongside enacted experiences of technology-in-use. The ‘storylines’ presented by care sector stakeholders and homecare managers converged with those of the policy discourse, emphasising technology’s capacity to enhance quality and efficiency. Our case studies however highlighted several implications for care work and organisational practice in homecare provision: the technologies we observed sometimes produced additional tasks and responsibilities, undermining the efficiency and quality storylines. The experiences of care providers and workers engaging with technologies in homecare warrant further investigation and greater prominence to challenge a discourse which is at times overly simplistic and optimistic.