Caring Communities: Caring for Sexual minorities in Later Life

Our ageing population is one of the key pressing social problems of our time. Of particular note, are the critical issues that surround caring for the UKs elderly population and who is responsible for delivering this care (Philipson 2013). Successive Government policies and legislation have assumed that care will be provided by relatives.

This doctoral study proposes to critically examine what happens in instances where there are no biological relatives that can be relied upon to do the caring. Relatively little is known about a generation of sexual minorities who are approaching later life and are likely to have considerable caring needs. This generation lived their lives in an era where homosexuality was a highly stigmatised identity and pre-1970 a criminal offence. Sexual minorities who did not suppress their attraction to persons of same-sex and follow the normative heterosexual trajectory, risked estrangement and rejection from family-of-origin and in many cases, these disrupted kin relationships were never repaired.

The seminal study by Finch and Mason (1993) illustrated that informal care is negotiated within the family and the carer comes to accrue responsibility for caring over time. What happens to older sexual minorities who are estranged from, or unable to rely upon kin relationships for care in their later life? During the 1980s and 1990s, it was well established that in the absence of biological kin, many sexual minorities turned to friends and ex-lovers to provide a supportive ‘family-like’ role (Weston 1997, Weeks et al. 2001).

The doctoral thesis would seek to examine whether such informal family-like networks still exist, can informal networks of friends and ex-lovers be relied upon to deliver the practical care for elderly pseudo-relatives, and if so how do such arrangements arise? The thesis will also explore the material, social, cultural and gendered differences present in such caring communities. The findings generated from this study will make significant contributions to policy and legislation and also to ensure that the third sector charities like Age UK and others are providing services that meet the needs of a diverse ageing population.

The School of Law Policing and Forensics
The School of Law Policing and Forensics at Staffordshire University are inviting applications for Partial Scholarship PhD projects within our school. This scheme gives you the opportunity to enrol on to a PhD project without having to pay any tuition fees. In exchange for this, you would be expected to provide a maximum of 250 hours of teaching support to the Academic Staff. Please note, that no bursary or any other funding will be provided.

If you have any further questions regarding the scheme, please contact Dr Graham Williams at [Email Address Removed]

Applications
To apply, in the first instance contact the relevant supervisor with your interested project who will discuss the project with you and advise you on how to apply for the PhD. You will need to contact the supervisor directly before applying for the PhD project.