Fast, Janet

Background: In the midst of a 'care crisis', attention has turned again to families who are viewed both as untapped care resources and as disappearing ones. Methods: Within this apparent policy/demographic impasse, we test empirically theorised trajectories of family care, creating evidence of diverse patterns of care across the lifecourse. The study sample, drawn from a Statistics Canada national survey of family care, comprised all Canadians aged 65 and older who had ever provided care (N = 3,299).

Excluding family caregivers and their goals from healthcare thinking and system design has contributed to their “failure to thrive.” Family caregivers are diverse, with dynamic, enduring, and variable life course care trajectories that are largely ignored. Using a co-design approach, caregivers prioritized their goals across seven life domains in an on-line survey. Physical, mental, and emotional health goals were top priorities across all ages. However, care-related goals were not caregivers’ highest priority.

Many carers spend money out of their own pockets on the care-related needs of their family members or friends, and this spending may expose carers to a higher risk of financial hardship. Using data from a nationally representative sample of family carers drawn from Statistics Canada's 2012 General Social Survey on Caregiving and Care Receiving, we find that nearly one in five carers reports experiencing financial hardship. The results from multivariate logistic regression analysis show that care-related out-of-pocket expenditures are significant predictors of financial hardship.

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) older adults are more likely than their heterosexual peers to age with limited support in stigmatizing environments often poorly served by traditional social services challenging their preparedness for end of life. Fourteen focus groups and three individual interviews were conducted in five Canadian cities with gay/bisexual men (5 groups 40 participants), lesbian/bisexual women (5 groups 29 participants), and transgender persons (3 interviews, 4 groups 24 participants).

Technology has been identified as an important strategy in making caring sustainable. This article takes the design process for carer support technology as a lens on the divergent definitions that are in play when governments, technology developers and carers contemplate 'sustainability'. We argue that a central impediment to finding a productive point of overlap among the three perspectives is a predominant focus on carers' needs. We contrast this needs-based approach, and its focus on doing the tasks of care, with a goal-oriented approach focused on being in relationships.

More than 30 years ago, Elder theorised multiple life-course trajectories in domains such as family and work, punctuated by transitions that create the structure and rhythm of individual lives. We argue that in the context of population ageing, family care should be added as a life-course domain. We conceptualise life courses of family care with core elements of 'care as doing' and 'care as being in relationship', creating hypothetical family care trajectories to illustrate the diversity of life-course patterns of care.

This study focused on out-of-pocket expenditures resulting from providing unpaid care to family members, friends, and neighbours. The main objective was to examine whether care-related out-of-pocket spending has a significant independent effect on caregiving consequences after controlling for the effects of other potential contributing factors. Cross-sectional data from the 2007 General Social Survey were used. Descriptive analyses and multivariate regression modeling were conducted.