Homecare: One woman's journey

Contemporary social policy compels seniors who require assistance with personal or household tasks to obtain help from 'the community'---a term that most often means 'women' family members. Much is written about 'caregiver burden' but little research explores the experiences of older women who are the recipients of home care. Using narrative inquiry methodology and a life history framework, a senior woman home care recipient on Prince Edward Island, Canada, was interviewed over a span of 4 months in 2005 creating a total of 10 hours of audio taped interviews. Interviews were analysed using a critical inquiry approach embodying a feminist and political economy perspective. Data were analysed throughout the interview process and understandings emerged about how care and care needs were negotiated and managed. Exploring Aronson's (2000) 3 images available to older women, this research seeks to expand on the image of 'managing'---resistance to 'being managed'---and extend the notion of 'work' involved in staying in charge of everyday life. Work is examined under 3 concepts, managing, controlling, and raging. Social policy with its reliance on family as care givers is an inadequate response that entraps and marginalizes women both as caregivers and as care recipients. Care recipients engage in work that involves resistance and raging against injustice in their daily practice of negotiating homecare. Rage as resistance is an appropriate response to the experience of marginalization and silencing among older women care recipients. Angry seniors is an image that claims rage as a legitimate force; it is an image of older women that calls for reconstruction and research to uncover its legitimate power in the daily lives of care recipients.Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-03, page: 1199