Care Home Stories

... with the editors

1. Why a book on this subject?

The ›nursing home‹ deserves a closer look as something beyond a personal, social, and political failure. We ask what stories emerge from within care homes, from workers, from residents, and from visitors. And we draw attention to the kinds of stories people are telling about long-term residential care, and ask why they are often so discouraging. The international perspective of our book shows commonalities across jurisdictions as well as some intriguing and important differences.

2. What relevance does this subject have in the current research debates?

Aging is an increasingly popular topic of research due to population aging. This book intervenes by offering a distinctive humanities perspective that shows questions of long-term residential care to extend beyond costs and calculations to real lived everyday experience of both workers and residents.

3. What new perspectives does your book open up?

Our book offers perspectives from people living and working within long-term residential care. It has chapters by age/ing scholars, some of whom tell stories of their personal experiences with long-term residential care colliding with their long-term research and writing. The book uniquely shows the care home to be a place where creativity can transform experience.

4. Who would you preferably like to discuss your book with?

Residents, workers, visitors, and people thinking about what to do when they or their loved ones need long-term care. Age studies scholars and critical gerontologists.

5. Your book in only one sentence:

This book tells vivid personal stories from within care homes, connecting them to interdisciplinary international age/ing studies research.