Informal carers and care-embedded social work: improving residential and nursing home admission

This study explores social work practice with informal carers during long-stay residential and nursing home entry. Specifically, it uses ethnographic methods to examine the importance of social workers undertaking their roles and responsibilities with care, when working with informal carers at such times. The study considers the extent to which social workers undertake their roles and responsibilities in “caring ways” (Engster 2005, p. 54) during care home admission processes and highlights the potential barriers to caring in the context of contemporary social work practice. The findings of the study show that informal carers are often deeply impacted by their experiences of care home admission and that many grapple with the enormous practical and emotional challenges faced. It is also seen, however, that when social workers undertake their roles and responsibilities with care, there is significant potential for alleviating the stresses and anxieties of informal carers. The study develops the concept of care-embedded social work to draw together and to test out the importance of various dimensions of care within admission-related social work practice. It examines the effects of caring on the lives of older people with dementia, their informal carers and on social workers themselves, as they undertake their day-to�day roles and responsibilities. Despite the potential of caring social work, the findings of the study show that levels of caring within social work practice are variable. The research explores the impacts of neoliberalisation on the caring practises of social workers, with a specific focus on the pressures of time. It also considers the actions needed to enable social work to become a more consistently care-embedded profession