Unpacking the impact of older adults' home death on family care-givers' experiences of home

Milligan, Christine and Turner, Janet Mary and Blake, Susan and Brearley, Sarah Grace and Seamark, David and Thomas, Carol Jane and Wang, Xu and Payne, Sheila Alison (2016) Unpacking the impact of older adults' home death on family care-givers' experiences of home. Health and Place, 38. pp. 103-111. ISSN 1353-8292

[thumbnail of JHAP-D-15-00664R2-2FinalPaper]
Preview
PDF (JHAP-D-15-00664R2-2FinalPaper)
JHAP_D_15_00664R2_2FinalPaper.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.

Download (1MB)

Abstract

Public Health England (2013) survey data indicates that while the place of death is geographically uneven across England, given a choice, many older people nearing end of life would prefer to die at home. There is, however, a growing critique that policies designed to support home death fail to understand the needs and preferences of older people and the impact on family carers. Such policies also make assumption about within whose home the home death takes place. Hence, there are major gaps in our understanding of firstly, where and how care work undertaken by family members within domestic settings takes place; and secondly, how it can create tensions between home and care that fundamentally disrupt the physical and socio-emotional meaning of home for family carers, impacting on their sense of home post-death. This can have consequences for their own well-being. In this paper we draw on interview data from our ‘Unpacking the Home’ study to elicit an in-depth understanding of how facilitating a home death can create an ambiguity of place for family carers, where the issues faced by them in caring for a dying older person at home, and the home death itself, can fundamentally reshape the meaning and sense of home.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Health and Place
Additional Information:
This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Health and Place. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Health and Place, 38, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2016.01.005
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3306
Subjects:
?? older adultsplace of deathmeaning of homefamily carerspalliative carehealth(social science)public health, environmental and occupational healthgeography, planning and development ??
ID Code:
78411
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
28 Apr 2016 12:10
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
31 Dec 2023 00:39