The Routledge Handbook of Social Care Work Around the World

The Routledge Handbook of Social Care Work Around the World provides both a comprehensive and authoritative state-of-the-art review of the current research in this subject. It is the first handbook to cover social care work research from around the world, including both low- and middle-income countries as well as high income countries.

Each of the 22 chapters are written by experts on long-term care services, particularly for older people and cover key issues and debates, based on research evidence, on social care work in a specific country. They look at perspectives of social care work from the macro level: the structural conditions for long-term care, including demographic challenges and the long-term care policy, the meso level: the level of provider organizations and intermediaries, and the micro level: views of care workers, care users, and unpaid informal carers. Furthermore, they discuss a number of topics central to discussions of care work including marketization, personalization policies, policy implementation under austerity, the provision of social care work whether through public services, or private arrangements, or mixed types, funding, the feminization of social care and the new role that technology, and robots can play in care work.

By drawing together leading scholars from around the world, this book provides an up to the minute snapshot of current scholarship as well as signposting several fruitful avenues for future research. This book is both an invaluable resource for scholars and an indispensable teaching tool for use in the classroom and will be of interest to students, academics, social workers, social policy-makers and human service professionals.

Karen Christensen is a professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, University of Bergen, Norway. Her research and publications focus on welfare sociology based on her interests in social care, work, gender and migration. She has led or collaborated on a range of research projects, nationally and internationally, within areas such as elderly care, welfare and disability, comparative social policy, and the lives of migrant care workers.

Doria Pilling is a sociologist and Honorary senior research fellow at the School of Health Services at City, University of London, UK. She has researched and published on a range of areas, including social disadvantage, case management, disability and employment, disability and technology, evaluation of service quality and comparative social policy.