Paper short abstract:

In Spain, the outbreak of the pandemic has reinforced the home as a space for care, conditioning the re-familiarisation of long-term care. We explore the possibility of generating a new care model that displaces the role of the family and women in the management and provision of care work.

Paper long abstract:

In Spain, due to the weakness of public policies, care of the elderly primarily takes place within the framework of a markedly family-oriented welfare system. This means that families, and especially women, build complex mosaics of care resources in which, in addition to family members, the market, the state, and the community daily articulate in the provision of care services. The outbreak of the pandemic has reinforced the home as a space for care, conditioning and modifying the strategies of families in care provision.

Using ethnographic data collected in an ongoing research study, in this paper we will analyse how the mosaic of care resources has changed as a result of the COVID pandemic. Specifically, we are interested in exploring: 1) the re-familiarisation of care work; 2) how families articulate with other care agents in the pandemic context; and finally, 3) the impact on families of reorienting public policy towards a more deinstitutionalised system that privileges the home as a space for care. Analysing the balance between the role of the families and the role of public policies in catering long-term care needs will allow us to shed light on the limits of the current model of care provision and, in doing so, also put forward alternative formulas that may promote the social redistribution of care, displacing the central role of the family and women in the daily management and provision of care for the elderly.