International Journal of Care and Caring
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This article analyses the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on ‘monetised’ family carers’ understanding of their own autonomy in a long-term care relation at home. The reduction or suspension of medico-social service deteriorated the situation of family carers of frail older people or people with disability. We develop and apply an analytical grid of 15 interviews of monetised family carers about the reorganisation of care systems and their situation as carers. We identify three types of understandings of autonomy among family carers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic: preventive autonomy; health protection autonomy; and supported autonomy.

Applying the concept of doing family, which centres on the organisation of, and the practices in, families’ everyday lives, our research questions focus on the efforts mothers and fathers undertake to keep everyday life going during the pandemic. We analysed two-wave panel data of the project ‘Growing up in Germany’, and conducted 20 in-depth interviews with mothers and fathers in order to examine their strategies in detail. Our findings confirm gender and other important differences, and reveal three major strategies to reconcile caring obligations with demands from paid work before and during the crisis.

The COVID-19 lockdown of Dutch long-term care facilities between March and May 2020 affected the quality of lives of residents and opposed professional and personal ethics of care. This article, based on 25 in-depth interviews with healthcare chaplains, gives insight into what moral challenges appeared for care professionals. Moral challenges were related to: ‘family ruptures’, ‘residents’ loneliness and despair’, ‘cold-hearted deaths’ and ‘response and responsibilities’. The findings illuminate the complexity of providing care during the lockdown and show variation in the impact of these ethical experiences, in which both moral distress and moral resilience occurred.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the importance of care and care work, and exposed pre-existing inequalities. Our survey of the impacts of COVID-19 on parents with small children in South Korea reveals that mothers were much more likely to bear the increased burden of childcare than fathers, which, in turn, had direct and negative impacts on their well-being. We discuss how South Korea’s dualised labour market, gender-biased employment practice, social norms about childcare and instrumental approach to family and care policies may have contributed to the persistent unequal distribution of unpaid care work within households and gender inequality.

The article elaborates what aspects of knowledge eldercare workers describe concerning everyday long-term care practices. The article utilises a thematic analysis of Finnish long-term care workers’ semi-structured interviews (n = 25), and in doing so, it contributes to the discussion concerning the epistemological basis of care. The analysis specifies four aspects of knowledge in long-term care work: objective/objectifying, particular, corporeal and tacit. In line with existing literature on knowledge and care, the findings indicate that rational-technical epistemological approaches are insufficient when complex and fluid care relations are concerned. Moreover, cognitive impairments and other particularities of eldercare provide previously under-researched epistemological perspectives for consideration.

Using six waves of longitudinal data, we investigate wellbeing, psychological distress and loneliness differences between informal carers and non-carers in the context of COVID-19-related policy changes in Australia. Wellbeing levels fluctuated along with the virus case numbers. Free childcare temporarily alleviated the disparity between carers and non-carers, but by its cessation, carers, in particular, reported lower wellbeing and higher psychological distress. Wage subsidies and income supports had opposing effects for carers’ and non-carers’ mental health but decreased the loneliness of both groups. Victorians, living in the state where the second wave of infections in Australia was concentrated, experienced worse outcomes than other Australians.

Recognising dependency as a fundamental aspect of existence and activating Kittay’s reciprocity principle, ‘doulia’, we investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on student carers at an Australian university, to what extent teaching staff care for student carers and which pedagogies and teaching practices aid student carers. Analysing the experiences of social science students shortly after the lockdown in 2020, we find that pedagogies of kindness and flexibility support student carers. We call on teaching staff to recognise students’ inevitable dependencies and commit to pedagogies of kindness.

In the spring of 2020, the Austrian government introduced COVID-19 containment policies that had various impacts on older people living alone and their care arrangements. Seven qualitative telephone interviews with older people living alone were conducted to explore how they were affected by these policies. The findings show that the management of everyday life and support was challenging for older people living alone, even though they did not perceive the pandemic as a threat. To better address the needs of older people living alone, it would be important to actively negotiate single measures in the area of conflict between protection, safety and assurance of autonomy.

Australia has been less impacted by COVID-19 than most other countries, partly due to strong preventive responses by government. While these measures have resulted in lower rates of infection, family and friend carers have been disproportionately affected by public health orders. The heightened risk of transmission to vulnerable populations, combined with the impact of economic uncertainty, unclear government communication, significant restrictions on movement and personal contact, and the reduction in formal support services, have highlighted pre-existing, systemic shortcomings in support for carers. The COVID-19 pandemic left many carers more stressed, isolated and worse off financially.