Carers, Care Homes and the British Media

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings

   Pages 1-16

3. Autoethnographies of Care

   • Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings

   Pages 17-38

4. Little More Than Fools and Monsters: Care Workers in the UK Media

   • Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings

   Pages 39-63

5. Conversations with Carers

   • Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings

   Pages 65-98

6. Concluding Thoughts

   • Hannah Grist, Ros Jennings

   Pages 99-108

7. Back Matter

   Pages 109-112

   PDF

This book focuses on the relationship between the media and those who work as paid care assistants in care homes in Britain. It explores this relationship in terms of the contemporary cultural and personal understandings of care work and care homes that have developed as the role has emerged as increasingly socially and economically significant in society. Three strands of analysis are integrated: an examination of the representations of paid care workers in the British media; the experiences of current and former care workers; and the autoethnographic reflections of the authors who have experiences of working as care assistants. The book offers a rich contextual and experiential account of the responsibilities, challenges, and emotions of care work in British society. Grist and Jennings make a case for the need to better value and more accurately represent care work in contemporary media accounts.

• elderly
• carers
• British media
• ageing studies
• age
• older
• media reports
• care
• old age

“This book presents a novel approach to researching care homes and carers, incorporating autoethnography and qualitative interviews with carers, and linking the themes with representations of carers in the British media. The result is thought-provoking and of interest and inspiration to cultural gerontologists, scholars of media and ageing, as well as carers themselves.” (Virpi Ylänne, Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication, Cardiff University, UK)

“This timely, well-researched book is undoubtedly a very useful contribution to the wider field of social care and wellbeing, as well as broadening the debate concerning media representations of health care to a neglected area. It is an important text on an under-researched topic.” (Julia Hallam, Professor Emerita of Communication and Media, University of Liverpool, UK)

• University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

  Hannah Grist

• Centre for Women, Ageing and Media, University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, UK

  Ros Jennings