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Balancing the Tension in Long-Term Residential Care

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Abstract

Although high income countries increasingly emphasize care at home, long-term residential care is and will remain the place where some of our most vulnerable live and work. Based on over 500 interviews with the entire range of actors in long-term residential care, intensive observations by interdisciplinary teams of at least 12 in 27 different sites in six countries and on background documents that take context into account, this paper explores tensions in long-term residential care. It argues that recognizing and balancing these tensions is critical to care and constitute promising practices. However, multiple pressures are shifting the balances in these tensions, with for-profit, chain ownership and the increasing pressure to emphasize clinical care among the most powerful forces.

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Notes

  1. See Eden Alternative http://www.edenalt.org/about-the-eden-alternative/

  2. See Dementia Care Matters http://www.dementiacarematters.com/

  3. See Alzheimer Society http://www.alzheimerlondon.ca/public-education-programs/gentle-persuasive-approaches-in-dementia-care

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. York University, Toronto, Canada

    Pat Armstrong

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  1. Pat Armstrong
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Correspondence to Pat Armstrong.

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Conflict of Interest

Pat Armstrong declares no conflict of interest.

Informed Consent

As there is no person or personal data appearing in the paper, there is no one from whom a permission should be obtained in order to publish personal data.

Ethical Treatment of Experimental Subjects (Animal and Human)

This research received ethics approval from York University as well as from specific homes studied, where this was required.

Additional information

This paper is a product of a seven-year team project on ‘Re-imagining Long-term Residential Care: An International Study of Promising Practices’ funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (File# 412–2010-1004: Pat Armstrong, Principal Investigator), with additional funding from the European Research Area in Ageing 2 project for a study on ‘Healthy Ageing In Residential Places’. Primary data for this paper comes from the team work and all 26 of the faculty from our team participating in the sites visits, as well as 10 students and additional academics in Norway, Germany, Sweden and the UK. They deserve full credit although none of them are responsible for my analysis. A list of team members can be found on our website www.yorku.ca/reltc

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Armstrong, P. Balancing the Tension in Long-Term Residential Care. Ageing Int 43, 74–90 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-017-9284-8

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