Duties to Care
Dementia, Relationality and Law

Duties to Care is the first empirically grounded, conceptually nuanced, socio-legal examination of caring for a person with dementia.

Rosie Harding (Author)

9781107483491, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 December 2018

281 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.4 cm, 0.42 kg

'This book is an important reminder of the need to blend theoretical and grounded methodologies in evaluating and developing legal responses to impaired capacity. The powerful personal narratives underpin an elegantly constructed argument in favour of a relational approach while at the same time recognising the unavoidable complexities in delivering this.' Mary Donnelly, Cork University

The world of dementia care can be a difficult one for carers to navigate, posing new challenges at every stage from diagnosis to end of life. In her ground-breaking investigation, rooted in original empirical data, Rosie Harding explores the regulatory and legal dimensions of caring for a person with dementia. By exploring carers' experiences of dementia care, she critiques the limitations of current approaches to health and social care regulation. This socio-legal work is a new contribution to the study of feminist care ethics, relationality, and vulnerability theory. Duties to Care argues that by understanding the relational contexts that shape everyday experiences of regulatory structures, we will better understand where law is operating to support carers, and where it adds to the difficulties they experience. Ultimately, the challenges that dementia poses will be addressed only if we find solutions that take account of the relationality of life, dementia, and law.

1. Introducing Duties to Care
2. Vulnerability, relationality and the challenge of dementia for law
3. Carers in law and society
4. Planning for the future in the early stages of dementia
5. Navigating life with dementia
6. Complaints and complaining about health and social care
7. Death and dying with and of dementia
8. Carers' emotional, social and material investments
9. Conclusions: relational duties to care.

Subject Areas: Medical sociology [MBS], Medical ethics & professional conduct [MBDC], Mental health law [LNTM1], Human rights [JPVH]