Care as crisis and care in crisis: older people’s care networks in Indonesia before and during COVID-19

Abstract

Care for older people in Indonesia is overwhelmingly a family responsibility, challenged at the best of times by poverty, family members’ other responsibilities, stereotypical beliefs about health and needs in later life, and stigma surrounding dependence and dementia. Recent years have seen the development of basic health monitoring and promotion services for older people, reliant on local volunteers, and the emergence of an array of pilot initiatives aimed at supporting and training informal carers and older people. This paper assesses the disparate ways in which older people’s care networks in Indonesia have been impacted by COVID-19. In locations where a fragile ecology of familial and non-familial care had emerged, we examine how the pandemic has disrupted this and prompted a retreat or reconfiguration of care support from non-familial providers. The paper presents early findings from ongoing multi-site interview and ethnographic data collection on older people’s care networks in Indonesia. We combine the perspectives of older people, their informal carers, local volunteers and healthcare providers, NGOs and governmental bodies and draw on representations of older people in the media. Current arrangements can be placed in a historical context of economic, familial and epidemiological crises, thanks to longitudinal research on older people in Indonesia since 1999.

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ORCID for Elisabeth Schröder-Butterfill: orcid.org/0000-0002-5071-8710

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