Chairman´s End of Year message
Dear friends,
It is a pleasure to take this opportunity to get back in touch with you to give a brief recap of some of HRF’s most significant activities carried out in 2021. A year marked by the hope of vaccines but also by the uncertainty of new variants that have slightly destabilised the recovery and the return to normality.
We started the year with the virtual workshops of our conference ‘Happy Homes, Happy Society?’ and greatly appreciated the work done by the researchers who presented their papers. We are delighted that Routledge will be publishing this work – our third publication with them. As I write, the editors, Maria Teresa Russo, Antonio Argandoña and Richard Peatfield are putting together the final preparation for the book..
Later in the spring we celebrated the global virtual launch of the book ‘People, Care and Work in the Home’, with the collaboration of Nottingham Trent University, and hosted by chief editor Professor Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem. Amongst the authors, Lord Best, co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Housing and Care for Older People, stressed the need for “right-sizing” in homes for later life and Baroness Hollins, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and Disability, spoke from the personal and professional experience of the value of home for those with intellectual disabilities. You can watch their speeches again by clicking on their names.
Motivated by the very positive response to the communication project ‘Home in the Time of Coronavirus’, we decided to launch a new project based on testimonies: ‘Caring at Home for those with extra needs.’ Thanks to the collaboration of all the participants, we were able to hear fascinating stories of effort, care and enormous dedication. Both projects are still being downloaded in all the languages in which they were launched.
2021 also marked the beginning of HRF’s research partnership with the International Centre for Work and Family (ICWF) at IESE Business School. The results of this research will provide new perspectives on the home,and will enable us to continue working to achieve that social change in the culture of the home that is needed now more than ever.