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Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model

Providing for the needs of the vulnerable is a critical component of social and health policy-making. In particular, caring for children and for vulnerable older people is vital to the wellbeing of millions of families throughout the world. In most developed countries, this care is provided through...

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Autores principales: Gostoli, Umberto, Silverman, Eric
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7710125/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33264347
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242779
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author Gostoli, Umberto
Silverman, Eric
author_facet Gostoli, Umberto
Silverman, Eric
author_sort Gostoli, Umberto
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description Providing for the needs of the vulnerable is a critical component of social and health policy-making. In particular, caring for children and for vulnerable older people is vital to the wellbeing of millions of families throughout the world. In most developed countries, this care is provided through both formal and informal means, and is therefore governed by complex policies that interact in non-obvious ways with other areas of policy-making. In this paper we present an agent-based model of social and child care provision in the UK, in which agents can provide informal care or pay for private care for their relatives. Agents make care decisions based on numerous factors including their health status, employment, financial situation, and social and physical distance to those in need. Simulation results show that the model can produce plausible patterns of care need and availability, and therefore can provide an important aid to this complex area of policy-making. We conclude that the model’s use of kinship networks for distributing care and the explicit modelling of interactions between social care and child care will enable policy-makers to develop more informed policy interventions in these critical areas. “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” — Hubert Humphrey Jr.
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spelling pubmed-77101252020-12-03 Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model Gostoli, Umberto Silverman, Eric PLoS One Research Article Providing for the needs of the vulnerable is a critical component of social and health policy-making. In particular, caring for children and for vulnerable older people is vital to the wellbeing of millions of families throughout the world. In most developed countries, this care is provided through both formal and informal means, and is therefore governed by complex policies that interact in non-obvious ways with other areas of policy-making. In this paper we present an agent-based model of social and child care provision in the UK, in which agents can provide informal care or pay for private care for their relatives. Agents make care decisions based on numerous factors including their health status, employment, financial situation, and social and physical distance to those in need. Simulation results show that the model can produce plausible patterns of care need and availability, and therefore can provide an important aid to this complex area of policy-making. We conclude that the model’s use of kinship networks for distributing care and the explicit modelling of interactions between social care and child care will enable policy-makers to develop more informed policy interventions in these critical areas. “The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.” — Hubert Humphrey Jr. Public Library of Science 2020-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7710125/ /pubmed/33264347 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242779 Text en © 2020 Gostoli, Silverman http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gostoli, Umberto
Silverman, Eric
Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title_full Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title_fullStr Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title_full_unstemmed Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title_short Social and child care provision in kinship networks: An agent-based model
title_sort social and child care provision in kinship networks: an agent-based model
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7710125/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33264347
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242779
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