title: Unpacking the impact of older adults' home death on family care-givers' experiences of home.
abstract: Public Health England (2013) survey data indicates that while the place of death is geographically uneven across England, given a choice, many older people nearing end of life would prefer to die at home. There is, however, a growing critique that policies designed to support home death fail to understand the needs and preferences of older people and the impact on family carers. Such policies also make assumption about within whose home the home death takes place. Hence, there are major gaps in our understanding of firstly, where and how care work undertaken by family members within domestic settings takes place; and secondly, how it can create tensions between home and care that fundamentally disrupt the physical and socio-emotional meaning of home for family carers, impacting on their sense of home post-death. This can have consequences for their own well-being. In this paper we draw on interview data from our 'Unpacking the Home' study to elicit an in-depth understanding of how facilitating a home death can create an ambiguity of place for family carers, where the issues faced by them in caring for a dying older person at home, and the home death itself, can fundamentally reshape the meaning and sense of home.
authors.affiliation: Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Electronic address: c.milligan@lancaster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Milligan
authors.affiliation: Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Electronic address: j.m.turner@lancaster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.affiliation: Honiton Surgery, Honiton, UK. Electronic address: susanblake@nhs.net.
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Blake
authors.affiliation: Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Electronic address: s.brearley@lancaster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brearley
authors.affiliation: Honiton Surgery, Honiton, UK. Electronic address: david.seamark@nhs.net.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Seamark
authors.affiliation: Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Electronic address: c.thomas@lancaster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Carol
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Thomas
authors.affiliation: Leeds University, UK. Electronic address: x.wang@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Xu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK. Electronic address: s.a.payne@lancaster.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Sheila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Payne
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001293:Attitude to Death; D017028:Caregivers / Q000523:psychology*; D004739:England; D005260:Female; D006291:Health Policy; D006798:Housing; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010166:Palliative Care; D057240:Patient Preference; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
keywords: Family carers; Meaning of home; Older adults; Palliative care; Place of death