5. Concluding Thoughts

This chapter argues that carers’ experiences of ‘doing’ care in the British care home environment are multiple and complex. It proposes that dominant modes of portrayal of carers and care homes in the British media as fools or monsters is detrimental to the value placed upon care work by society. It examines the importance of conceptualisations of time within care home cultures and adds to current understandings of the ‘cult of time’. It states that to improve the quality of care we must rethink questions of value and resource so that there is time to care. It highlights the relevance of the findings of this book for the future development of media training in and about care homes and offers areas for prospective research.