Elder Care in Crisis

How the Social Safety Net Fails Families

Emily K. Abel

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781479815395
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479815418
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Civil Law
• Index: Social Sciences

Explains why there is a crisis in caring for elderly people and how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated it

Because government policies are based on an ethic of family responsibility, repeated calls to support family members caring for the burgeoning elderly population have gone unanswered. Without publicly funded long-term care services, many family caregivers cannot find relief from obligations that threaten to overwhelm them. The crisis also stems from the plight of direct care workers (nursing home assistants and home health aides), most of whom are women from racially marginalized groups who receive little respect, remuneration, or job security.

Drawing on an online support group for people caring for spouses and partners with dementia, Elder Care in Crisis examines the availability and quality of respite care (which provides temporary relief from the burdens of care), the long, tortuous process through which family members decide whether to move spouses and partners to institutions, and the likelihood that caregivers will engage in political action to demand greater public support. When the pandemic began, caregivers watched in horror as nursing homes turned into deathtraps and then locked their doors to visitors. Terrified by the possibility of loved ones in nursing homes contracting the disease or suffering from loneliness, some caregivers brought them home. Others endured the pain of leaving relatives with severe cognitive impairments at the hospital door and the difficulties of sheltering in place with people with dementia who could not understand safety regulations or describe their symptoms. Direct care workers were compelled to accept unsafe conditions or leave the labor force. At the same time, however, the disaster provided an impetus for change and helped activists and scholars develop a vision of a future in which care is central to social life.

Elder Care in Crisis exposes the harrowing state of growing old in America, offering concrete solutions and illustrating why they are necessary.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction: New Perspectives on Caregiving
• 1. Reformulating Stress and Burden
• 2. Challenging the Medical Model of Dementia
• 3. Looking to the Past: What the Nineteenth Century Can Tell Us
• 4. The Elder Care Crisis: The Tyranny of the Family-Responsibility Ethic
• 5. “That Was No Respite for Me!”: Using Services at Home and in the Community
• 6. “They Can’t Possibly Love Him as I Do”: The Anguish of Institutional Placement
• 7. “Oh No, Don’t Feel Guilty”: Advising Others and Fighting Back
• 8. “No One Is Coming out of This Unscathed”: The Nursing Home Tragedy in the Pandemic
• 9. “This Being Homebound Is So Hard”: Confronting Hospital Regulations, Sheltering in Place, and Interacting with Workers
• Conclusion: How the Pandemic Exposed and Exacerbated the Crisis in Care
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author