A Strengths Perspective on Caregiving at the End-of-life
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-18, 02:28authored byHughes, M
The adverse effects of caregiving provided by family members, partners, and friends for people dying at home from a life-limiting illness have been extensively documented in the palliative care research literature, yet minimal attention has been directed towards the strengths of informal carers and their subsequent growth and development. Using in-depth interviews from a purposive sample of informal carers (n = 28), this paper reports empirical evidence from a subset of data analysed for an Australian qualitative study, illuminating a range of strengths frequently obscured beneath the emotional-labour work of caregiving and further sequestrated by the chaos of grief. A strengths perspective on caregiving at end-of-life is important because it helps to inform a reconstruction of caring and dying to include dimensions that relate to the growth of human potential and capacity, as well as enabling collaborative partnerships between workers and informal carers at the end-of-life.
History
Publication title
Australian Social Work
Pagination
online
ISSN
0312-407X
Department/School
School of Social Sciences
Publisher
Routledge
Place of publication
Australia
Rights statement
Copyright 2014 Australian Association of Social Workers