The complex spaces of co-production, volunteering, ageing and care

Abstract

The care of older people is being radically reformulated by placing the individual at the centre of care process through the introduction of individual care plans. This marks a significant transition for the care of older people away from acute responsive clinical care towards a greater emphasis on co-produced preventative health and social care and relations of care “with” older people. Geographies of volunteerism are yet to consider the effect of co-production as a dominant rhetoric in UK health and social care. In this paper we show that the Health and Social Care Act (2012) and the Care Act (2014) has the potential to fundamentally alter discourses of care by introducing new spatialities to older people's care. New spatialities of care will not only rely on the reciprocity and interdependence of care between individuals and organisations but also the mobilisation of a voluntary care-force to be attentive to individuals. Spatialising co-production reveals the institutional and professional boundaries that prevent the type of open partnership that sits at the heart of the rhetoric. Our ethnographic and qualitative methodology was developed to understand how our case study of Living Well (Cornwall, UK), as a philosophy of care, is realised in practice and to consider the main collaborators’ views of different methods of co-production involving volunteers. We discuss two principal spaces of co-production, highlighting the opportunities provided for, and barriers to, co-production expressed by volunteers and other partners by attending to the relations of care that are recognised through: (1) formal meetings and coffee mornings, which provide spaces for volunteers to contribute, and (2) multi-disciplinary team (MDT) meetings, in which volunteers are largely absent.