The CareVisions research project & ISS21

Dr Lizzie Ward, School of Humanities and Social Science, the University of Brighton (UK)

25th April 2022, 15:00-16:30

Online seminar via MS Teams Register via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/carevisions-seminar-relational-research-and-producing-knowledge-about-care-tickets-299439410337

This seminar considers how knowledge about care is produced. Within care ethics the ‘epistemological dimension’ of care is recognised in the concept of ‘responsiveness’ in which attention to the care-receiver’s experience informs the care process at the micro level. But most knowledge about care is produced without the inclusion of care-receivers and without regard to their lived experiences of care. Within policy and practice, where marketized care systems are informed by neoliberalism, ‘knowledge’ about care is dominated by managerial concerns about care provision using audit and measurement of time and task approaches where care provided in measurable units (the 15 minute care calls). These approaches exclude lived experiences of what it is like to need care, to ‘do’ care – the relationships and processes that contribute to what ‘care’ is. Within the context of research, the epistemological dimension of care ethics, closely relates to the participatory approach and relational research practices we (myself and colleagues) have sought to develop working with older co-researchers.

For us, the research process itself is as important as the research findings. What we are able to say about our research findings derives from the way in which we carried out the research as a team that included older people as co-researchers, so not just what we found out but how we found it out is fundamental. Relational research practice is grounded in ethical imperatives for inclusive research but moreover it enables co-produced knowledge about care based on lived experiences that can directly challenge the underpinning assumptions of a neoliberal framework of marketized care.