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Purpose:Very little is known about how older people from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups caring for someone after a stroke access and engage with social care services. This paper explores both the experiences of carers whose relative was receiving social care services in their own home and the value of a theory of humanising care to understand and explain these experiences. Method:Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 50 carers from five different ethnic groups: Asian Indian, Asian Pakistani, Black African, Black Caribbean and White British. Data were thematically analysed within a phenomenological framework. Results:Five interacting themes emerged: communication and bureaucracy; time and timing; communication and rapport building; trust and safety; humanity and the human dimensions of care. Many of the experiences could be interpreted within a conceptual framework of humanising care underpinned by eight interacting dimensions of what it means to be treated as an individual and a human. Conclusions:Carers from BME and White British groups share many experiences of homecare although language and cultural difference may exacerbate common pressures and stresses. The framework for humanising care is a useful tool to evaluate aspects of homecare that are responsive to dignity and diversity.Implications for RehabilitationExplicitly identifying, describing and valuing the human dimensions of care may support services in responding appropriately to homecare users from black minority ethnic communities as well as those from white majority groups.Unresponsive services and poor communication may lead to loss of trust with care agencies and undermine BME carers’ sense of entitlement and competence in engaging with homecare services.Care worker continuity investing time in building relationships and care worker familiarity is important to many families who access social care services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current social work education in India reflects globalization priorities and tendencies of neo-colonialism that emulate curriculum priorities and duplicate content developed in countries like the USA. Social work education as implemented by countries like the USA, has limited success in transnational training of social workers and their ability to address emerging social problems and deep rooted structural imbalances within non-USA social contexts. Yet, the concept of the world being an emerging global village is used to justify and reaffirm the colonial goals of universal education and pedagogies within social work and its application to starkly different contexts, such as India. This paper argues against the imperialist nature of social work education through examples from social work syllabi from Indian schools of social work. Secondly, this paper examines the role of academic collaborations and international organizations in addressing the challenges in curriculum development. Finally, through an example from a Curriculum Development Project undertaken in a sub-Saharan African country by one of the authors, the paper demonstrates ways of generating more local content for curricula that would create culturally sensitive social services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the politics of naming in memorials of the First World War. That such memorials are highly political is shown in the case of the 'Indian' memorial at Neuve Chapelle: at the request of Pakistan, who wanted it to be retitled the Indo-Pakistan memorial, the War Graves Commission attempted to erase the word 'India' from the memorial's register, documentation and signage. Comparing this memorial on the Western Front with its counterpart in Mesopotamia reveals that the listing of dead and missing servicemen's names was a policy specific to Europe. Colonial rank-and-file soldiers, and labourers and porters, were normally not named on memorials elsewhere. In Africa, evidence from the archives of the War Graves Commission demonstrates a sharp differentiation between the treatment of 'white graves' and those of 'natives'. These practices, some formally encoded in a policy ruling, rested on contemporary assumptions about stages of civilization and lives worth commemorating. The paper concludes that the equal treatment in terms of 'race' and 'creed', which the War Graves Commission and its historians persistently claim alongside equality irrespective of social class and military rank, was an aspiration rather than a practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The VISION 2020 initiative aims to eliminate avoidable blindness by the year 2020. Cataract, the main cause of blindness and other visual impairment, is a main focus of this effort. In India, the Aravind Eye Care System provides an impressive model demonstrating how high quality eye care, including cataract surgery, can be delivered to large numbers and made affordable to all. Similarly, financially self-supporting systems have not been developed at this point in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the factors that lead to success at Aravind, and compares and contrasts the conditions in India with those found in much of sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]