School of Health Sciences
Division of Health Services, Research, and Management
Disability and Social Inclusion Seminars
We invite you to our December seminar
Comparing experiences of users/care workers in
cash-for-care systems in the UK and Norway
Tuesday 6th December, 1 to 2.15pm
Venue: Convocation suite, (in Centenary Building on Spencer Street, off St John Street, EC1V 4PB)
To book a place please email Doria Pilling: d.s.pilling@city.ac.uk
Speaker:
Karen Christensen, Professor of Sociology at the University of Bergen
Karen will speak about both disabled people’s and care workers’ experiences in the welfare system ‘cash-forcare’ in the UK and Norway. Her talk is based on findings from a qualitative cross-national study she carried out
in London and Bergen. In both countries the cash-for-care system aims to enhance service users’ independence
by giving them the role of an employer or manager in relation to their care workers, who are termed ‘personal
assistants’. As ‘independence’ is currently a key issue within social policy, her study contributes to empirically
based knowledge about the contents of ‘independence’ in relation to welfare services in disabled people’s daily
life, which strategies care workers may use when meeting these ‘empowered’ users, how the cash-for-care
system can affect the relationships disabled people and personal assistants shape together and finally, how all
these issues may vary due to different directions encouraged by the British and Norwegian cash-for-care systems.
Karen is a sociologist from the University of Bergen who has been working in the department of Sociology for
over ten years, with her main duties consisting of both teaching and supervision at all levels as well as
researching. Her main interests focus on welfare areas such as modernization of social care services, care policy
practices, welfare and disability, comparative social policy and consumerism. During her career she has been a
co-editor of the Journal of Sociology and a member of several networks, currently a Scandinavian network group
comparing Scandinavian cash-for-care schemes, and a Nordic network for research on privatization in elder care.
Karen is currently working on a new British/Norwegian project into migration and care-work with her base at the
Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London.
Karen’s research findings on cash-for-care systems are published in the following articles:
“In(ter)dependent lives”, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 11(2), 117-130, 2009;
”Caring about independent lives”, Disability & Society, 25(2), 241-252, 2010.
The third article into relationships will appear in 2012 in Disability & Society, title: “Towards sustainable hybrid
relationships in cash-for-care systems”.
Please let us know if you have any special requirements
For details of how to get to the venue please see: http://www.city.ac.uk/maps/
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