Autonomy (psychology)

Background: E-health initiatives on the Internet can be used to provide support to people with chronic diseases and to their caregivers. In 2014/2015, we created a free website called jesuisautonome.fr where older people, or their carers on their behalf, can assess their independence in daily living by filling out a simple questionnaire. Objectives: To evaluate the interest of the public in websites of this kind, by analysing home care plans obtained via the self-assessment questionnaire. We also describe patterns of use and visitor behaviour.

Our goal in this article is to contribute to a differentiated analysis of paid caring work by considering whether and how women's experiences of such work is shaped by their employment status (for example, self-employed versus employee) and the nature of care provided (direct or indirect). Self-employed care workers have not been widely studied compared with other types of care workers, such as employees providing domestic or childcare in private firms or private homes. Yet their experiences may be quite distinct.

In contrast to other forms of family caregiving, becoming the parent or carer of a child with an intellectual disability (ID) implies an ongoing responsibility beyond the attainment of chronological adulthood (Meyers et al., 1985; Todd and Shearn, 1996). At the same time, a discourse of self-determination pervades policy around transition to adult services in ID in England (Valuing People, 2001). In this paper we present a subset of data from a project which aimed to examine how the process of transition from child to adult services in ID is managed.