The Right to Be Me

Maria Cheshire-Allen (Researcher, at Swansea University) is joined by Irene Mortimer, (Swansea Carers Centre) and Jude Dale, (Dementia Friendly Swansea) to discuss how the concept of wellbeing as an enduring ideal defining what it means to live a ‘good life’ interacts with how care in older age is understood and experienced.  Together, they reflect on whether, and how the concept translates into everyday experience or the ‘right to be me’ for family carers of older people living with dementia.

Maria is a qualitative researcher working at the Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research (CADR)- click here to go to the CADR website- at Swansea University, Wales UK.  Her research interests include ageing, care, care ethics, and social care policy.  Her research is informed by a previous career working in several policy and campaigning roles for NGOs in Wales, as well as working as a paid carer for older people with dementia.  She has published in the areas of theory, policy and empirical research addressing questions concerning the wellbeing of family carers.

Her latest research article ‘No-one was clapping for us’: care, social justice and family carer wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic in Wales is published in the International Journal of Care and Caring and available to access below.