Talking about Care

Despite its familiarity, the realities of care are both complex and contested. This book offers a unique approach to scrutinising the co-existence of both care and abuse in relationships. It demonstrates ways of increasing critical reflexivity when working with people involved in difficult care relationships. The book emphasises that when talking about care, we need to care about talk.

Discourse analysis is introduced as a method of investigating relationships, policy and literature in informal care. Analytic tools are considered alongside case-studies to illustrate how both carer and caree construct their relationship and account for difficulties with each other.

The book addresses key questions, including:

· What can we learn by muddying the false polarities between 'care/abuse' and 'carer/caree'?

· How do carers and carees use life histories to explain troubled relationships?

· What can discourse analysis add to how we make sense of individual carer/caree accounts?

· How can health and social care practitioners apply these ideas to reflect on their own practice?

Talking about care is an important resource for practitioners, trainees and academics in health and social care who want to critically examine the way that care is talked about. It explores new territory by addressing both practice and theoretical issues, drawing particular attention to the utility of discourse analysis in practice.

Liz Forbat is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships, at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She has an ongoing interest in relationship difficulties, and has worked as a psychologist in acute psychiatry and forensics.