The precious gift economy of caring vs. box-ticking technocrats
The funding of care in England and Wales is a Byzantine structure of mysterious entitlements and clawbacks. The new government has wasted little time (rather like its predecessor in 1997) in announcing an investigation into this morass – and, with its Commission on the Funding of Care and Support due to report next summer, it’s [...]
‘Mad professor’ tackles social care
When I get out my camera to take his photograph, Heinz Wolff says: ‘I have three faces,’ and demonstrates: ‘Mad professor [glasses on forehead], slightly less mad professor [glasses on nose] and normal [no glasses].’ We decide to go for mad professor.
The fight for older women’s cohousing
Five years ago, Jayne Nelson watched her 94 year-old mother die. ‘She refused to leave home and she complained of loneliness all the time. It was so painful to watch. She somehow felt my sister and I should be able to sort it out, although neither of us lived nearby. Knowing what I’d felt about [...]
Networked love
Joan is a Canadian woman with a history of mental health problems. When she developed necrotising fasciitis and had to go into hospital, the people who cared about her joined an online social network so they could keep in touch with one another. That network was Tyze, which differs from more familiar sites like Facebook [...]