Dear Helen

Your initial findings do resonate with my study on
informal care.  The benefit of a life story interview
technique is that you can get a larger picture (and a
reflected longitudinal one) of the life framework in
which the current situation sits.  On the other hand,
it is very possible that your initial expectations of
'what you would find' need to be set aside or
modified.

In the case of my interviews with informal carers, my
expectation was that I would hear stories of
resilience and some sort of personality type that
gravitated to circumstances in which the person could
be generative and caring.  In fact, the stories turned
out to be quite surprising and even upsetting.  In
every case, the informal carer had their issues around
the care that they themselves had received as
children.

You state, "She was placed in care on several
occasions but always ran back to her mother.  This
carer has been a carer all her life and the impact of
this is far reaching for her I think".

This is central to my thesis that informal care is
often  ‘do unto others’ behaviour as a call for help,
attention and validation, but a convoluted message
that is seldom heard.  Psychologically, these adult
care givers may be, more often than not, the members
of the care dyad most in need of emotional care. 

My complete thesis is available on my website
kipworld.net, but for brevity's  sake, you may want to
read a journal article consisting of two of the
carers' stories:
Jones, K. (2006) "Informal Care as Relationship: the
Case of the Magnificent Seven" Journal of Psychiatric
& Mental Health Nursing, Vol. 13: 214-220.

I am surprised that you are not continuing with the
team analysis.  For me, this was one of the great
successes on my work with the method.

Hope this helps a little,
Kip 

--- Noble Helen <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Dear Kip (or anyone else),
> 
> I was wondering if I could ask you some questions
> related to my work which
> 
> may resonate with some of yours which I do apologise
> for not knowing very
> 
> well. I am doing a study looking at the experiences
> of patients who opt not
> 
> to dialyse and the impact this has on carers. I am
> trying to use BNIM at
> 
> first and second interview but as my study is
> longitudinal I am interviewing more regularly. 
> 
> I am not going to use BNIM to analyse
> 
> my data as I am hoping to present some global
> messages esp. in the renal
> 
> arena as very little work has been done in this area
> and renal patients are
> 
> a marginalized group who miss out on palliative
> care.
> 
> One carer has given a very rich story of the impact
> the renal disease has
> 
> had on her life, the main thing being that her
> mother is going to die. But she
> 
> also talks about her early life with her mother who
> has always had mental
> 
> illness, didn't speak English, was a single parent
> and wasn't able to look
> 
> after her. She was placed in care on several
> occasions but always ran back
> 
> to her mother. 
> 
> This carer has been a carer all her life and the
> impact of this is far
> 
> reaching for her I think. I was wondering if you had
> any thoughts on how I
> 
> might progress at future interviews. Could you
> direct me to any literature
> 
> that might help. I don't want to loose the impact of
> the renal disease but
> 
> as I am finding with most of my patients/carers
> there is much more in life
> 
> than just that and I will need to bring all that
> together somehow!
> 
> I realise I have only given you a very brief sketch
> of my issue but please
> 
> do ask me to expand if that is helpful.
> 
> Many thanks
> 
> Helen
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
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Dr Kip Jones
Reader in Qualitative Social Science
Centre for Qualitative Research
Institute of Health & Community Studies
Bournemouth University United Kingdom
*************************
Website: www.kipworld.net
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