Care in Hard Times from the Perspective of Elderly Care Workers

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has deepened and reshaped the care crisis both on personal and organizational levels. The study aims at answering how and in what form the symptoms of the care crisis appear in elderly care, which is one of the most important but undervalued fields of professional care. The focus of the study lies on what additional burdens the primarily female employees bear due to performing both paid and reproductive labor at the same time. The primary focus of the qualitative case study, conducted in the summer of 2020 and the spring of 2021, was to explore the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. The preliminary assumption is that the measures to curb the pandemic exacerbated the pre-existing organizational crisis and made it even more visible. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted in a mid-sized town located in the Southern Great Plain in Hungary with the key stakeholders of care management: heads of institutions and mostly middle managers in coordinating roles. In the second phase of the study, focus group interviews were conducted with non-executive carer workers. The purpose of the interviews was to explore their personal perceptions and narratives of care.