Conclusion and Discussion

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a part of the solution to the problems of public eldercare to be accepted as a critic and not a support, the themes expected of further eldercare communication are therefore; how to move the relative from the problem to the solution side of the function of public eldercare.

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becoming an antagonizing adversary to the effort of achieving the three new principles and easing the financial pressure on public eldercare.

I have demonstrated how with the seven roles, three relationships are also constructed: a care relationship, a relationship of complementarity and a conflict relationship. I have also shown how the conflict relationship and the role of critic are described as being a role and a relationship preferably avoided by means of information and involvement.

Consequently, in this period the relative appears as a potential part of both the problem and the solution of eldercare. I maintain that what is seen here is an eldercare policy that for the first time in my story constructs ideal roles for the relative: the roles as a social caregiver, a proxy, a source of information and a source of continuity, are all observed to be part of the solution on which public eldercare depends. The policy expects the relative to enact these roles, but also to be in need of support to enact them – an expectation observable in the additional construction of a role as a co-receiver of eldercare. Without doubt, the role of the relative is now no longer presented in the policy as a matter of inevitable, pre-given developments in society, but is rather presented as a set of roles decided in the period’s eldercare policy as a means of achieving the imperatives of public eldercare. Accordingly, I contend that what is here seen for the first time in my story of the relative is also an eldercare policy reflexive about the possibility of failed expectations. The policy expects that in further eldercare communications the relative will not connect to the roles the policy desires, so the policy constructs a role as an opposing critic to stabilize such generalized expectations of disappointment. As such, the policy has premised how further eldercare communication is to address such failed expectations.

Notably, with this expectation of disappointment the policy constructs public eldercare as responsible for whether the relative is enacted as a valuable support or an antagonizing adversary. I have demonstrated how the resident and relative councils and the needs assessment process are constructed as tools and temporal encounters for enacting and enabling the relative as valuable support and discouraging the antagonizing adversary. I assert that such expectations posed to public eldercare show a public eldercare that can more accurately be described as budding than retrenching.

Like the existing historical literature and the critical studies of recent public eldercare developments, I find that the eldercare policy of this period expects public eldercare to stop

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crowding the relative out of eldercare and to provide not total eldercare but only necessary and sufficient eldercare, thus leaving room for the inclusion of the resources and competencies of elderly citizens and relatives – which is to say, I identify expectations of public eldercare retrenchment. However, I also find that these expectations are accompanied by expectations for how public eldercare is to enable both elderly citizens and their relatives to play their new roles – that is, expectations for new types of public services. Thus, I offer an additional nuance to the existing literature on the developments in eldercare in the 1980s and 1990s: eldercare policy describes a desire for a public eldercare less total than total eldercare, which leads to a care more appropriately termed different than less. New expectations are constructed for public eldercare while the policy prescribes a withdrawal from eldercare. In sum, the policy has constructed a solution to the problem of eldercare, a solution that it does not observe public eldercare as being in complete control of, as the relative is expected to play important roles in the solution, which the policy expects the relative to disappoint, and the policy addresses this expectation of disappointment by assigning public eldercare responsibility for enacting the relative (and the elderly citizen) in its new roles. This is a budding rather than retrenchment.

Finally, I assert that the seven roles and three relationships of the eldercare policy of the 1980–

1994 period indeed reduce uncertainty about what to expect of the relative. First of all, I have demonstrated the complementarity relationship and the four roles of social caregiver, source of information, source of continuity and proxy to stabilize expectations as to what complementary competencies and resources the relative – in the figure of a spouse but also of more distant relatives – can be expected to hold for public eldercare. The policy has decided what complementary resources and competencies the relative can be expected to possess, as well as when such competencies and resources are relevant and who is expected to possess them – thus, closing contingency. I have also argued that the conflict relationship and the opponent role reduce uncertainty because the role and the relationship premise how further eldercare communication is to address failed expectations of the ideal roles.

However, I assert that, in doing so, new forms of open contingency are constructed with the policy. For one, the availability of seven roles and three relationships constructs an open contingency as to which of the roles and relationships further eldercare communication is to connect to. Notably, with the role as an opponent and with the conflict relationship, this is no longer just an open contingency as to which role and relationship to connect to, but also as to

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which ideal to connect to – that is, whether to connect to the relative as a resource or an opponent, and, as such, whether to expect the relative to be part of the problem or the solution of public eldercare. In addition, an open contingency is also constructed as concerning what expectations to connect to with the roles as a waning caregiver and a co-receiver. The former role has been constructed thus far with three different functions of public eldercare and the latter with two. I contend that an open contingency is constructed with regard to which of the expectations over time have been condensed into the roles to which subsequent eldercare communication is to connect. As concerns the role as a co-receiver, the role has thus far both condensed expectations that the relative is a burdened and unqualified caregiver and therefore more likely to be a receiver of eldercare than a caregiver itself. This is followed by expectations of how the relative possesses competencies and resources that are complementary and superior to the public eldercare that the public eldercare is expected to enact by approaching the relative as someone who might need services. The roles simply appear different depending on the different roles with which they are co-constructed. I claim this to be an uncertainty postponed to subsequent eldercare communication regarding what to expect of a co-receiver. As concerns the role as a waning caregiver, this role has gone from condensing expectations of its being a pre-given role not subjected to policy decisions, but simply one of societal, demographical and cultural developments; to condensing expectations of its being an ideal role, because the relative was expected to be too burdened and unqualified to provide proper care; to now containing expectations of the waning exacerbating the problems of eldercare and thus being something to be avoided. Thus, in the 1980–1994 the caregiver role has become heavier with expectations that can be connected to the role and carries with it into further eldercare communication an open contingency as to which expectations to connect to with the role. In other words, the two roles carry with them an open contingency expanding in complexity with every new function and every new expectation the roles have held available over time.

Approaching these findings of the chapter with a gaze towards the eldercare literature, I would like to draw attention to three relevant points of engagement.

As far as the literature on the role of the relative goes, in this chapter I have demonstrated how the role as a co-receiver, referred to in the literature as a hidden patient or a co-client, as described above is not a uniform role but a role having thus far condensed different expectations from two different functions of public eldercare. Moreover, I have demonstrated how the roles

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of an opponent, a proxy, a source of information and a source of continuity, also all known from the existing literature, are not new roles assigned to the relative in eldercare, but stem from the 1980s and 1990s, when they emerged as part of the policy’s solution to the problems of public total eldercare and as part of the policy’s reflections regarding the possibility of failed expectations. Notably, the opponent role emerges for the first time in the Danish eldercare policy of this period, where one also for the first time witnesses an eldercare policy constructing ideal roles for the relative as imperative for solving the problems of public eldercare. Put differently, when the policy starts conceiving of public eldercare as dependent on the relative’s enactment as various roles, it simultaneously conceives the possibility of failed expectations, which it addresses by condensing such expectations in an opponent role.

As concerns the role as a social caregiver identified in this period, this role resembles the visitor role identified in the existing literature. I term the role ‘social caregiver’, as the role of a visitor in the existing literature is connected to public nursing homes, whereas the social caregiver role is also expected in regard to elderly citizens’ aging in place. Regardless of the differences between the social caregiver identified in this chapter and the visitor role of the literature, the social caregiver role demonstrates how the relative has been expected to meet the social needs of the elderly since the 1980s and 1990s. It also serves to show how such expectations, when first emerging in the eldercare policy, was no small matter. To be assigned the task of meeting the social needs of the elderly was not a role given to the relative as a way of keeping it out of eldercare, as the visitor role is perceived to be. Instead meeting the social needs of the elderly was considered imperative in solving the problems of public total eldercare and was considered a task only relatives held the competencies and resources to fulfil.

Based on my findings in this chapter, my second point of engagement with the eldercare literature is with the historical studies of eldercare and the critical studies of recent developments in eldercare. As already presented, my findings in this chapter support the findings in the literature as regards a public eldercare retrenchment from the 1980s and onwards. However, beyond this diagnosis of withdrawal, I have added what might be more precisely termed a budding. By this I mean that the policy does not withdraw from forming expectations for public eldercare. Whereas public eldercare is expected to withdraw and make space for the elderly and their relatives, it is nevertheless still expected to enter a new arena in which its services are aimed at enabling elderly citizens and their relatives to perform their new

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roles. In other words, public eldercare is to withdraw from eldercare by entering a new role as an enabler and facilitator. As such, this withdrawal does not entail posing fewer expectations to public eldercare and more to elderly citizens and their relatives, but rather poses new expectations to everyone.

Accordingly, I have demonstrated how at this point in my story, what is seen is not a re-familiarization or a re-assignment of a relative role in the sense of a return to old familiar expectations for the role of the relative and the relationship between public eldercare and the relative. Although I concur that the relative is now desired in eldercare, I maintain that the ‘re’

in re-familiarization and re-assignment must not cover up the fact that this is not a return to old familiar roles and relationships. The relative is assigned a role in eldercare, but this role is now strictly defined in the eldercare policy. We are not back in the 1930s where the relative defined what it meant for the relative to be a caregiver without the policy’s deciding on the who, what and when of such caregiving by the families, and where public eldercare was simply expected to substitute for the relative if the relative withdrew from eldercare. The policy has now defined the relative in eldercare to be; the one attending to the social needs of family members; the one ensuring continuity in family members’ lives; and the one supporting family members in their new roles. The relationship is now also quite different, as it is not one of substitution in which the relative by its presence or absence decides on whether public eldercare is to substitute for the relative. Indeed, the relationship is now about complementarity, with public eldercare expected to decide on how best to complement the relative in eldercare, and with eldercare policy also defining precisely which complementary resources and competencies the relative is to offer the public eldercare, how and when. This is not a re-emergence of something ever seen before in Danish eldercare policy, this is new and connected to the particular function of public eldercare of the period.

Against this backdrop, I come to my third point of engagement with the eldercare literature.

Thus far, I have shown how when one sees the relationship between public eldercare and the relative from the perspective of the relative roles of Danish eldercare policy, the relationship developed first from a matter of substitution if the relative waned from eldercare; then into a matter of total substitution, if the eldercare policy found the relative burdened and unqualified;

and now the relationship has ultimately become a matter of complementarity, with the relative now expected to complement public eldercare, and public eldercare expected to not crowd out

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the relative but to only complement it, leaving enough room for it to offer its complementary resources and competencies. This all shows the question of complementarity and substitution to be complex and to include important details that stem from the particular function of public eldercare and the roles of the relative in this function with which the relationship is constructed.

The role of the relative in the 1980-1994 period is summarized in the table below.

The function of public eldercare

Problem = public total eldercare/

Solution = implementing the three principles of self-determination, continuity and the use of one’s own resources and competencies as guiding ideals in eldercare.

The role of the relative

A waning caregiver

A source of continuity

A social caregiver

A proxy A source of informatio n

A co-receiver

An opponent The

relationship between public eldercare and the relative

Complementarity Care Conflict

Table 4) The Role of the Relative in the 1980-1994 period

In the collected story of the relative, its role has thus far been shown to change as summarized in the table below. How the role is constructed in the period from 1995-2009 is the theme of the next chapter.

1930–1969 1970–1979 1980–1994

A waning caregiver The care worker employer

A burdened caregiver An unqualified caregiver

A co-receiver A proxy

A source of information A source of continuity A social caregiver An opponent Table 5) The roles of the relative from 1930–1994

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