Centre for Policy on Ageing



Frail and disabled users of home care — confident consumers or disentitled citizens?
Author(s)	Jane Aronson
Journal title	Canadian Journal on Aging, vol 21, no 1, Spring 2002
Pages	pp 11-26
Keywords	Physical disabilities ; Older women ; Domiciliary services ; Usage [services] ; Consumer ; Public expenditure cuts ; Canada.
Annotation	Health care cuts and restructuring are shifting the site of acute care from hospitals to homes and prompting Canadian provincial governments to introduce varying forms of mixed economies in home care. Typically, such arrangements seek to drive down public costs and to reposition service users as "consumers" of market-modelled care. This paper draws on an ongoing study of frail older women and women with disabilities receiving home care in Ontario, and explores the significance for service users of these economic and political objectives. Rather than feeling like consumers free to exercise choice and demand quality in the mixed economy of home care, these women experienced their positioning within it as insecure and subordinate, and its supply as unpredictable and meagre. The implications of these findings for fashioning secure and equitable public responses to older and disabled citizens who need assistance at home over the long term are discussed. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-020620201 A
Classmark	BN: BD: N: QLD: WY: WN8:5YD: 7S
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...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.