Tag: social care

Children’s voices, family transitions and everyday care – chairing sessions at ICFC 2025

Posted on by amy.woolford

Dr Gözde Doğanyılmaz-Burger, Senior Research Coordinator at the University of Bristol, reflects on the sessions she chaired at the first International Child and Family Conference held in Bristol on 17-19 June, and the questions those sessions set out to answer:

  • How are children’s voices recognised (or dismissed) in legal, policy and everyday decisions that shape their family lives?

  • How do caregiving expectations, policy design, and labour markets affect family life and gender equality?

 

Session 1: Children’s agency, participation, and family transitions

On day two of the conference, I had the pleasure of chairing and presenting in a powerful session on Children’s Agency and Participation, a topic close to my heart and the focus of my PhD research.

The session featured four studies that offered unique insights into how children’s voices are heard (or silenced) in matters that deeply affect them:

Children’s experiences of parental separation
Dr Susan Kay-Flowers explored 25 years of international research on children’s experiences of parental separation, highlighting ethical dilemmas around participation and voice.

Father-child contact after domestic violence
Prof Simon Lapierre and Ms Naomi Abrahams shared findings from Canada on children’s participation in decisions about father-child contact after domestic violence, proposing information as a critical fifth dimension to Lundy’s model.

Children’s rights and family law
Prof Maebh Harding and Dr Jakub Pawliczak challenged us to rethink constitutional conservatism in Ireland and Poland and asked whether children’s rights can drive more inclusive family law.

Communication during divorce
And I presented my research comparing young people’s experiences in Türkiye and England, focusing on how communication (or lack of it) during divorce shapes their emotional wellbeing, agency and rights.

Each presentation sparked important questions about children’s legal, psychological and emotional needs, and how research, policy and practice can respond more meaningfully.

Thank you to the presenters and all who joined the discussion. It was a joy to be part of this international conversation on centring children’s voices in family transitions.

It was extra special to share my findings on Turkish and English young people’s experiences of divorce-related communication, and to have my main supervisor, Prof Debbie Watson, whose guidance has been invaluable throughout my PhD, in the room, along with my mum Prof Nesrin Özsoy-Bür, who travelled all the way from Türkiye to support me (especially with childcare!).

 

Session 2: Care, family policy, and the everyday experiences of work-life balance

On the final day of the conference, I had the privilege of chairing another incredible session, this time focused on care, family policy, and the everyday experiences of work-life balance.

It was a joy to listen to such rich, thought-provoking presentations that explored how policy, labour markets, and social expectations shape caregiving, while also highlighting the voices, presence, and roles of children and families so often left out of mainstream narratives.

Caregiving responsibilities and gender inequality
Ms Curran McSwigan (Deputy Director of the Economic Program at Third Way, USA) presented a powerful analysis of how caregiving responsibilities continue to drive gender inequality in the US labour market, particularly for women without a college degree. Her research reminded us how the absence of robust childcare and paid leave policies contributes to ongoing cycles of disadvantage for women and children.

Work-family reconciliation policies
Dr Manisha Mathews (University of Birmingham, UK) critically examined the UK’s work-family reconciliation policies, arguing that current policy design still reflects the “male breadwinner” model and limits fathers’ ability to participate in childcare. Her comparison with the Nordic model underscored the value of long, well-paid leave for both parents in promoting children’s cognitive and emotional wellbeing.

Home as both the family and work hub
Dr Jana Mikats (Webster Vienna Private University, Austria) introduced the concept of dense, intimate knowledge, referring to children’s deep, nuanced awareness of their parents’ work when that work is done at home. Her ethnographic study of Austrian families challenged traditional boundaries between “work” and “family”, offering a fresh lens on intimacy, co-presence, and children’s everyday lives in digitally shaped households.

In our discussion, we reflected on how policy and discourse often centre around nuclear, heterosexual, two-parent families, excluding the lived realities of single-parent households, blended families, grandparents, friends, and broader networks of care. There was a clear call to recognise and support the many ways care is provided beyond dominant family models.

I’m grateful to have chaired such a thoughtful and intersectional session and for the opportunity to connect research across disciplines and contexts.

 

Rethinking parenting, care and children’s roles in society: keynote speeches from ICFC 2025

Posted on by amy.woolford

The first International Child and Family Conference took place at the University of Bristol from 17 to 19 June 2025. It brought together experts in childhood and family to explore a range of current themes across its three days. Within this, the three keynote speeches focused on some of the key areas from a research and policy perspective.

Dr Gözde Doğanyılmaz-Burger, Senior Research Coordinator at the University of Bristol, gives a summary of each of the inspiring and thought-provoking keynote speeches at the conference.

 

Prof Esther Dermott on the impact of digital technology

We kicked off the International Child and Family Conference 2025 with a thought-provoking keynote by Prof Esther Dermott (University of Bristol Pro Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences), who challenged us to rethink how digital technologies are shaping families, relationships and parenting.

She asked us to consider:

  • What does co-presence look like in a world of constant digital communication?
  • How do state systems, private companies, and invisible data processes (like predictive analytics) influence parenting and family life?
  • Are our existing social science tools enough, or do we need new methods to make sense of a digitally entangled world?

From Yondr phone pouches promoting “smart-free” childhoods to Studybugs apps tracking school absence for health outcomes, Prof Dermott highlighted the double-edged nature of digital tools: supportive on one hand, but deeply entangled in systems of oversight and inequality on the other.

Prof Dermott encouraged us to shift away from narrow ideas of “good parenting” and move toward a relational approach, recognising the complex, dynamic interactions between children, parents, institutions, and technologies.

An inspiring way to start the conference, with big questions to think about over the next two days!

 

Mr James Bury on the care system in England

On day 2, we were pleased to welcome James Bury, Interim Managing Director of CoramBAAF and Coram Family & Childcare (UK), as our second keynote speaker. He offered a thought-provoking reflection on the care system in England.

Drawing on his practice experience, Mr Bury questioned whether the complex systems we’ve built truly align with children’s needs and how we can better support permanence through psychological, legal, and physical stability.

He highlighted four key pressures:

  • Declining foster carer numbers
  • Challenges in adopter recruitment
  • Complexities in post-adoption contact
  • The impact of education and mental health support on placement stability

Mr Bury urged us to innovate, simplify, and collaborate, ensuring our systems are responsive to the real journeys of children and families.

 

Prof Tatek Abebe on the ‘commons agenda’

We began the final day of the conference with a powerful keynote from Prof Tatek Abebe (NTNU), Centre Convenor and an expert in childhood studies and development research with a focus on African contexts.

Prof Abebe drew us into a “commons agenda”, a perspective that sees children not just as individuals but as active contributors to collective life in their communities through social labour, care, and cultural practices.

Prof Abebe explored how children’s “living labour” in domestic work, communal exchanges, and even music activism creates value, resists structural violence, and forms part of shared social economies.

He introduced Mahiberawi Nuro community networks in Ethiopia as living examples of communal support systems beyond state provision, embodying what he called “commoning”.

He advocated for ecologically regenerative, decolonial research methods that foreground children’s relational existence, encouraging us to rethink childhood studies through a moral, institutional, and ecological lens.

Prof Abebe’s keynote challenged us to expand how we understand childhood, embracing collective responsibility, ethical solidarity, and research that honours children’s active roles in shaping community life.

 

Thank you to our three keynote speakers for their fascinating insights which gave all of us attending the opportunity to reflect on these topic areas and on our understanding of the issues, and the implications of these, in relation to our own areas of research and policy.

 

Working with volunteers in social care for older people

Posted on by policystudies

Dr Ailsa Cameron, Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Research in Health and Social Care and a Fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research, discusses findings from a recent project looking at how we can best support volunteers in social care settings.

Encouraging people to volunteer in social care for older people has been a key part of practice in the sector for many years, but in recent times the significance of volunteering has grown, particularly in light of the funding cuts faced by the sector.

We know volunteers can do a huge amount to enhance the care and support that older people receive. They can bring a new energy to settings and give older people an opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with people other than paid care workers. Volunteers can also do a lot to reduce the loneliness and isolation that many older people experience.

There are also benefits for those who volunteer in social care themselves – opportunities to develop new skills, gain experience of different work contexts and enhance their own wellbeing, or just an opportunity to give something back.

During our research on Exploring the Role of Volunteers in Social Care Settings (ERVIC), we heard about many settings where volunteers were making an important contribution to older people’s care and support. We learnt about volunteer-run exercise programmes and befriending services in residential care, organising and running lunch clubs, and volunteers giving extra support at day centres and visiting people recently discharged from hospital.

However, reliance on volunteers to deliver care and support for older people brings new challenges to the sector. Volunteers are not a ‘free service’ – to be effective, they need training as well as ongoing support. This is particularly important given the vulnerability of many older people who receive social care services. Volunteers have much to offer, but they also need to be clear of the boundaries and limits of their role, and they need to know what to do if they have concerns about an older person.

Several of the settings we visited told us they were struggling to recruit and retain volunteers. Changes to retirement law, as well as growing numbers of older people looking after grandchildren or caring for their partners or friends, means that fewer people have the time or flexibility needed to volunteer. On top of that, delays in DBS processes and burdensome training programmes were thought by volunteer coordinators and managers to put some people off of volunteering in the sector.

On Thursday 21 March 2019, in partnership with Voscur, we will host a workshop at the Southville Centre to present our findings from the ERVIC project and exchange ideas about the challenges and opportunities associated with working with volunteers in social care settings for older people.

This event is aimed at volunteer coordinators, commissioners of adult social care and providers and managers of social care organisations and will involve a Voscur-led workshop called Measuring the Value of Volunteering, plus discussions about how volunteers are contributing to social care, the challenges of involving volunteers and how best to work with volunteers.

If you’re connected to social care, volunteering or services for older people, or you’re just curious and would like to find out more, we hope to see you at the Southville Centre next month. Book your place for the workshop.

Crisis in care homes: how can we improve standards in the context of austerity?

Posted on by policystudies

Liz Lloyd, Professor of Social Gerontology in the Centre for Health and Social Care discusses the factors behind deteriorating standards in care homes.

There is a crisis in British care homes, arising not merely from bad behaviour by staff members but from the economic and political context of the social care market.

There are currently close to half a million individual places (‘beds’) used by around 4% of the population aged 65+ and 17% of people aged 85+. Statistics vary somewhat, according to what is being measured, but we can be certain that although the number of older people in the population have risen, a smaller proportion of them live in a care home, that they are older on average when they first enter the home and have more complex, long-term illness that require more skilled assistance.

Older people are also increasingly likely to pay at least a part of their care home fees. According to Laing and Buisson’s 2012-2013 Care of Elderly People UK Market Survey, some 43.4% of older residents in the independent sector paid the full costs and a further 14% received partial council support and topped up their fees. The majority therefore still rely wholly or partially on public resources but this proportion is falling.

Running parallel to these changes is the rise in private ownership of care homes and payment of fees. Over three decades, the proportion of places in local authority run care homes in the UK has dropped while the proportion in the private, for-profit, sector has risen so it now has a 75% share of all places. The voluntary, not-for-profit, sector share has been more stable but is falling slightly. The current crisis involves increasing levels of provider failure and exit from the care home market. Several big providers are deeply in debt, raising fears of a major collapse like that of Southern Cross in 2008. Owners point to rising costs as a consequence of the introduction of the national living wage and falling profits because fees paid by local councils have not risen in line with increased costs. The consequences for providers is an unsustainable business model.

The consequences for older people who need residential care are evident in delayed discharges and hospital waiting lists, a point illustrated perfectly in the case of Mrs Iris Sibley, who remained in the Bristol Royal Infirmary for six months while her family sought a care home place. For residents and their families the insecurity associated with provider failure means added anxiety and stress. Add to this the associated problem of worsening standards, which the Care Quality Commission fears will grow in the absence of major reform. Mrs Sibley’s son described how one place she was offered was so bad that he ‘wouldn’t put a sick dog in there’.

Not all older residents experience the same thing, of course. According to Norman Lamb MP, former Health Minister, the market has come to benefit older people with enough money to pay for their own care while disadvantaging those who rely on state support. Care homes where all or most residents pay their own fees are more secure than those that rely mostly on the local authority payments and are more able to absorb the additional cost of the national living wage. We might question why anyone would argue against a decent level of pay for the people who care for us when we are sick and disabled, but the dominant theme in social care for older people is that it should be as cheap as possible – hence, high numbers of migrant workers in the care home sector.
In fact, debates about care homes focus overwhelmingly on keeping costs down and agreeing who should pay. Should it be individuals (during their lifetime or after their deaths), their families or the public in general? Health and social care are frequently portrayed as unaffordable in the context of the ageing of the baby boomer generation.

I declare an interest here, being a baby boomer, but take issue with such a simplistic argument. Demographic trends have an impact on demand for care, for sure, but there is evidently a wider set of factors at play. Indeed it is arguable that demographic trends provide a useful rationale for cuts to public spending that would be made anyway. Policy-makers have placed themselves in a bind as cuts to public spending have impacted on private sector profits, proposals to recoup the cost of care from older people’s estates after death are met with outrage in the press, as are stories like that of Mrs Sibley.

Evidence on what makes a care home a good place to live and work is abundant. Higher standards of care are usually reflected in higher levels of staffing, more skilled workers and a culture of person-centred care that attends to the whole range of an individual’s needs, not merely to their basic physical requirements. A culture of ‘person-centred care’ promotes a sense of belonging and security and enables residents to maximise their capacities, enjoy new experiences and take risks. Care homes are likely to remain a part of the care system, despite their reputation, so we need to focus on standards. A sizeable number of us who will live in a care home at some stage of our lives, or have a close relative who does. But more importantly, care homes are inextricably linked with other parts of the care system so it is in our interests to think about standards in care homes as a policy issue that affects us all.

European citizens who are disabled: what about them?

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Val Williams, from the Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies comments on the implications for disabled people of Brexit 

Val Williams
Val Williams

The shock of the BREXIT decision is not just an issue for disabled people who now have to live in a smaller, diminished country. It also has implications for disabled people across Europe, and particularly perhaps those with intellectual (learning) disabilities.

But what about our partnership with disabled people across Europe?  In 1973, when we joined the EU, disabled people in this country did not commonly have a ‘voice’, nor were they taken seriously as a political force. At that time, I had just started working with young people with learning disabilities, within a largely segregated system, which had only just started to recognise their right to an education. Since then, disabled people have themselves taken a lead, and are rightly proud of their achievements within the disabled people’s movement – for instance, over institutional closure, and the ideas of the social model and inclusion. During the 1990s and 2000s I took part in various EU Social Fund projects, where our experiences as UK partners was not just to speak English, but to offer progressive and supportive ideas, while learning alongside other member states. The European Disability Forum has posted the following since the BREXIT decision, which reminds us of some fundamental values:

We strongly believe that a common EU human rights agenda is better achieved together. The tone of the UK campaign, which was characterised by a divisive public debate on migration, reminds us of what is at stake and what we need to fight for, within a strong EU: common values of non-discrimination, human rights and freedom of movement.

Will UK ideas on disability now be discredited?  What of the gains in thinking on independent living?  Institutional closure across parts of Eastern Europe?  Turning specifically to the position of people with intellectual (learning) disabilities, during the latter part of the 1990s, People First groups in the UK set out to link with their European counterparts, and to set up a ‘Europe People First’, genuinely led by people with intellectual disabilities themselves. The movement in Europe has always been within the framework of families’ organisations, but the umbrella organisation ‘Inclusion Europe’ now has a self-advocacy section. This is a European Platform of Self-Advocates, which is composed of member organisations across Europe.  Nothing is perfect, but compared with the 1990s, there has been progress towards an understanding that Europeans with intellectual disabilities have a right to live like others, to self-organise and to get support to have a voice.  And importantly, UK self-advocates have always been strong in demanding these things, and in making a common cause across Europe.

In the UK we are still aware of the many steps that need to be taken towards including people with intellectual disabilities in the wider disabled people’s movement. There is also already a European network, not just through the Disability Forum and an EU umbrella organisation for disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) across Europe.  In the light of the BREXIT decision, they have themselves reached out to disabled people in the UK, as mentioned above in their moving statement on the need to continue the struggle for human rights together across Europe.

Not least, accessible information is key to a meaningful conversation with all disabled people, including those with intellectual disabilities – see the progress made for instance by public and Government organisations in communicating with all. One out of many examples would be Public Health England’s easy English guide to avoiding Flu. UK efforts to work for equality in information, in voice and within public debates and research are now widely recognised across Europe, with a recent publication in Austria on Inclusive Research for instance, written both in English and in German.

As with all disabled people, the position of people with intellectual disabilities has moved on. In the 1990s I was able to visit both Germany and France, on some visits accompanying people with intellectual disabilities. Both countries had strong segregated (albeit meaningful) policies on employment – people lived within a ‘network’ of services, particularly in Germany, and in both countries, they were to some extent treated (and addressed) as children, unlikely to have anything useful to say or to contribute to the debates.  Compare that with the debates in those countries today. On June 26th, the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper in Germany led its Society section with a discussion of sexual rights of disabled people with autism. The headline is that people with intellectual disabilities would have aspired merely to be ‘satt und sauber’ (fully fed and clean) until now; the argument is that they can also aspire to enjoy life!   That would not have happened before the progress made by bringing disabled people together, through the European Union. The UK voice is important, and the connection between disabled people across Europe needs to continue, so that disability rights remains a common cause.

Val Williams is Reader in Disability Policy and Practice, Head of the Norah Fry Centre for Disability Studies, and Executive Editor of Disability and Society.

 

We need to help children in care treasure the objects that tell their life story

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Debbie Watson, Senior Lecturer in Childhood Studies at the School for Policy Studies has recently published a piece in the Guardian.

It is about the importance of mementoes, objects, and other articles which help to anchor adopted children emotionally and provide a connection to their past.