Cargiving Life Course: A Comparative Discourse Policy Analysis of Strategies to Support Carers in the Global North

Background and Purpose: Caregiving has emerged as a priority in the global north requiring transformational leadership to address challenges across social welfare and public health (e.g., access to care, carer wellbeing, financial strain). Dominant discourse defines carers in relation to a current care recipient and focuses exclusively on active caregiving roles. This framing limits the visibility of carer needs during key transitional phases such as before caregiving begins and after caregiving ends. The post-caregiving phase, in particular, is associated with distinct physical health, emotional and employment-related impacts, yet it remains under examined in international policy strategies. Drawing on life course theory and critical disability studies, this study conceptualizes caregiving as a dynamic, temporal and reciprocal phenomena that unfolds in a continuum across the life course. The purpose of this study is to examine how national caregiving strategies incorporate life course perspectives into policy discourse, with attention to the recognition of pre-caregiving and post-caregiving phases.

Methods: This comparative discourse policy analysis uses a theoretical grounding in life course theory and critical disability studies. Four caregiving strategies from the global north context were analyzed: (1) Australia’s National Carer Strategy 2024-2034: Improving the Lives of Australia’s Unpaid Carers, (2)the European Union’s European Care Strategy, (3) the United Kingdom’s Carers Action Plan 2018-2020: Supporting Carers Today, and (4) the United States’ 2022 National Strategy To Support Family Caregivers: Actions, for States, Communities, and Others. Primary source documents were collected from official government websites and policy repositories to ensure authenticity and credibility. A set of deductive codes were developed based on caregiving literature, life course theory and policy discourse (e.g., “current carer”, “pre-carer”, “former carer”). Coding was conducted using Nvivo software and supported by memo-writing, and peer debriefing to ensure rigor and reliability.

Findings: All four strategies centered the active caregiving phase. Life course discourse was present in varying degrees across the strategies, and most notably in the 2024-2034 Australian strategy. Mentions of the post-caregiver phase appeared in less than 1% of text across all documents. Only Australia (2023-2024) and the UK (2022) addressed post-caregiving needs including grief support, return-to-work, and social isolation experiences. The pre-caregiving phase was mentioned in less than 0.15% of the total strategy text and appeared solely in the US strategy, where effort to normalize caregiving through public awareness campaigns were noted. Three of the four strategies (Australia, UK, US) incorporated carer perspectives in the development of their strategy, though it is unclear whether these included former or prospective carers.

Discussion: The presence of life course discourse in all four strategies reflects a recognition across nations that caregiving is a temporal and socially situated phenomenon. However, most policy remains limited to the active caregiving period. This focus neglects the well-documented health, economic, and psychosocial effects of caregiving across the life course, including before and after caregiving. To better support carers across the lifespan, public health and social welfare policy must expand its scope to include the full care continuum.