Abstract

This project will explore the role that hairdressing plays in the lives of older people who are high-level users of health and social care. This will include investigating the formal/paid services provided by hairdressers, and the styling and management of hair undertaken by care workers. There are four main aims to the research:

i) to describe the experience of hairdressing and explore the significance it holds for older service users;

ii) to describe the workplace experience of care-based hairdressers and care workers;

iii) to scrutinise and document the constituent elements of hairdressing encounters; and

iv) to consider patterns of provision, access and affordability of hairdressing services to older service users.

This ethnographic study will be conducted over three types of setting: care received at home, hospital care settings and care homes. It will include observations and filming in care-based salons as well as interviews with care workers, hairdressers and older service users. The findings will inform policy and practices in care and raise the profile of body-work that is fundamental to well-being and the avoidance of decline, depression and neglect. The study addresses an aspect of care settings that is little understood and for which no evidence-base currently exists.