Academic literature on elder care examines the quality of care, the structure of services, and the role of non-professional care. While fairly universal across developed countries, the cultural and social welfare contexts vary suggesting cross-country differences in how these issues are understood and addressed. The media both reflects and shapes what people regard as significant and is, therefore, one place to examine cross-cultural differences in approaches to care; however, studies that compare the discourse across countries with different social welfare structures are almost non-existent. In this study, we analyze print media published in four major newspapers in Finland and the United States. Using quality of care, structure of services, and non-professional care as our guiding framework, we conducted a thematic analysis of news reports, feature stories, and editorials published during May-June 2015 and March-April 2016. Quality of care was the most common theme in Finnish media with a focus on: 1) harmful or dangerous care practices, 2) neglect or lack of care, and 3) care falling behind set quality requirements. Despite the differences in the welfare regime, cost of care to the individual was a common theme in both countries as was a focus on increasing home care and informal care. There are weak signals in both countries of innovations that co-mingle aspects of informal and formal care such as intergenerational housing, employment opportunities for older adults, and co-locating day care and adult day care centers. These tend to be based on local initiative rather than strategic, governmental planning.
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