Presentation Schedule
Guardianship and Ethics of Substitution for Older Adults Living with Dementia: Lessons from the Canadian Medico-Legal Landscape (104137)
Session Chair: Longjian Liu
Thursday, 26 March 2026 13:15
Session: Session 3
Room: Room 707 (7F)
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
How do people who are facing dementia alone find or become connected to a legal guardian or substitute decision-maker? How do social ideas about consent, capacity, and familial configurations shape guardianship frameworks and the lives of people who are facing dementia alone? This presentation will share key findings from Stranger Than Family, a Canadian-based qualitative research study that examined the medico-legal frameworks shaping how older adults facing dementia alone are brought under state or familial guardianship. Funded by the Alzheimer Society Research Program, the study included semi-structured interviews and an expert consultation session with social service providers working in senior care and elder abuse sectors (n= 22) and analysis of legal decisions regarding guardianship over older adults in Canada’s most populous province (Ontario). This presentation will (a) describe how heteronormative assumptions about family and relatedness underlie Canadian guardianship and substitute decision-making laws and practices and (b) situate the issue of guardianship for older adults living with dementia as a key question for critical scholarship on the aging-disability nexus (Aubrecht, Kelly, and Rice, 2021) and as a question first and foremost of citizenship.
Authors:
Celeste Pang, Mount Royal University, Canada
About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Celeste Pang is an Assistant Professor in Women's and Gender Studies at Mount Royal University in Canada.
See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule
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