Family Carers: beyond visibility

Despite family carers’ increased visibility and recognition nationally and internationally, many receive little support from services and experience inequality because of their caring role.

Mary Larkin, Professor of Care, Carers and Caring will explore what ‘visibility’ means for family carers through the lens of her own contributions to the care discourse and the promotion of carers’ rights and will explore her own vision of family carer visibility in the future.

Abstract

Although the fact that the term ‘carer’ is now commonly used, it is a relatively recent construct. The emergence of the concept led to in the increasing visibility of carers and their recognition in policy and practice.

Policies have explicitly focussed on a number of carers’ rights; health and well-being protection; and access to support, training, and education. These developments can be seen as indicative of carers’ promotion from ‘the wings of welfare’ to legitimate recipients of support in their own right.

The many drivers behind carers’ visibility and recognition are explored in this lecture, including the contributions made by Professor Larkin herself – within The Open University, locally, nationally and internationally - to improving outcomes for, and supporting carers.

Professor Larkin will also demonstrate how despite all the progress made carers experience inequality because of their caring role in relation to their employment, finances and health. This is often because they do not receive the support from services they need and, even when carers do receive support, it is not effective.

Given that the demand for, and demands on, carers will continue to increase and caring will affect most of us, clearly more needs to be done to address this prominent and universally challenging 21^st century issue of social justice. Professor Larkin will conclude with her own vision of what now needs to be done in relation to carer visibility in the future.

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