Care Continuity Under Pressure: Buiding Resilient Adult-Care Systems

Population ageing, care scarcity, and climate-related disasters are converging to reshape the conditions under which older adults can remain safely at home and in their communities. Across many contexts, including Canada, Ageing in Place has become a central policy framework for supporting older adults’ independence, dignity, and community connection. Yet its sustainability depends on the continuity of everyday care. When home-care services are delayed, unavailable, or disrupted, responsibility often shifts onto family members, paid caregivers, migrant caregivers, community organizations, and informal support networks.

Disasters intensify these pressures. Wildfires, floods, extreme weather, heat events, storms, and prolonged power outages disrupt formal care services while increasing older adults’ need for medication, mobility assistance, food, transportation, electricity-dependent medical devices, communication, and social support. Adult care therefore becomes a crucial but often under-recognized component of disaster resilience. Rather than treating older adults only as vulnerable populations, this session asks how care infrastructures, labour arrangements, immigration policies, and community-based support systems shape preparedness, response, and recovery.

The session invites papers examining how adult care is organized, sustained, strained, or transformed under disaster conditions. Particular attention will be given to the everyday labour required to maintain care continuity, including the relational, emotional, logistical, and physical work performed by caregivers. Contributions may address migrant caregiving, precarious care work, home-care systems, long-term care, community care, and policy tensions at the intersection of ageing, labour shortages, and disaster risk.