Becoming dependent: How is eldercare implemented in France and Sweden ?

Résumé 0

The communication discusses results from a comparative project on the implementation of eldercare in France and Sweden. The entrance into dependence is understood as a process, and eldercare is seen as a part of the organisation of social care in society thus reflecting different welfare traditions. An overview of eldercare on the institutional level in the two countries is supplemented by an interview study identifying ways of cooperating between actors such as public eldercare, family members and help provided by profit and non-profit organisations departing from elderly persons' everyday experience. The interview study includes about twenty elderly persons in each country as well as a limited number of administrators and adult children. The study sheds light on how policies actually are implemented on the local level and puts the focus on who actually do what and when for the elderly persons. The different roles played by the state, the family, the market and civil society clearly appear in the elderly persons' everyday experiences. Family members in France take on a more active role both as coordinators of care and as actual caregivers. The study further shows that gender and class background still have implications but that such differences are much larger in France than in Sweden.