Canadian Association on Gerontology Webinar Series

The structural burden of system navigation on families of older adults

Dr. Laura Funk
University of Manitoba

Thursday, April 16, 2020
12:00-1:00pm Eastern time

Registration is free!
Register Now: https://form.jotform.com/93054581903256

Dr. Funk will present findings from her research into how families of older
adults navigate health and social service systems, using data from 100
in-person interviews with 32 family carers and 22 formal navigators.
Findings illustrate how navigation work can contribute to structural
burden, in part through carers’ emotional responses to navigation
challenges as well as through the emotion work required to navigate
services. Navigation challenges cost excess time and energy, and have
consequences for access to formal supports, raising concerns about how care
systems which place the onus for this work on families can support equity
goals. Formal, public service navigators, where available, need dedicated
time and ability to help broker and advocate using family-centric
approaches. Discussion will focus on identifying opportunities to engage
our collective, public responsibility to address system navigation
challenges.

Dr. Laura Funk
Dr. Funk is a sociologist and social gerontologist, and Associate Professor
at the University of Manitoba. Her scholarship explores how older adults
and paid and unpaid carers interpret experiences, preserve identities, and
negotiate normative ideals, and how such processes use and reinforce
discourses of age, care and responsibility. In addition, her work
interrogates structures of care for older adults and the pressing, often
invisible impacts on paid and unpaid carers in the context of decades of
health reform in Canada.

Dr. Funk is the 2019 recipient of the CAG Recognition Award for Excellence
in Research on Unpaid Caregiving: In Honour of Neena Chappell.

To manage subscriptions/passwords, or view archives, go to http://listserv.yorku.ca/archives/click4hp.html . [log in to unmask] is run in collaboration with Health Nexus: http://www.healthnexus.ca/index_eng.php