Write about your life during the Coronavirus pandemic

We are interested in hearing from people who have family members aged 65 or over living in another country about how they have experienced the Coronavirus outbreak and the measures taken to confine it. We would like to know how it feels to care for a family member across national borders in this situation, what kind of practical problems you might have faced and what kinds of solutions you have possibly found. You can use your own style of writing and write about your own experiences and the topics that are important to you. It is up to you how much or little you write.

You can send us your story in either of the following ways:

1) Write your story to the textbox below (see Your story). Please note that you can also use copy/paste to copy your text from another location. After you have finalised your story, please follow the instructions below the textbox.

2) Send us your story in an attachment file. Before sending the attachment, please answer the Background questions below. After that, please follow the Instructions for sending an attachment.

Please focus on the topics that matter to you the most! If you wish, you can also use some of the questions below to help you writing. We would be interested to know for example…

Caring for family members living in another country
...how does it feel to care for family members who are aged 65 or over and living in another country in this situation?
...in what ways have you kept in touch with your family members, particularly those who are older? Has this changed during the Coronavirus outbreak? Do you feel that your family member is alone?
...are your family members worried about you? How has this been expressed?

Your family members’ needs for help and support
...have any older family members needed help during the Coronavirus outbreak? Have they received such help?
...have you been able to help your older family members yourself? Would you like to help more? Or has your family members’ need for help felt overwhelming?
...has the Coronavirus outbreak affected the public services that your family member(s) living abroad need?
...do you think your family members who live abroad will get help if they need it in the future? From whom? Who do you think should help?
...have the travel restriction related to the Coronavirus pandemic affected your ability to care for your family members who live abroad?

Finding information about the pandemic
...in your opinion, have you received enough information about the measures and restrictions related to the Coronavirus outbreak from the perspective of your family members who live abroad? Would you have wished for more information or information of a different kind?

What else would you like to tell us about your life or the life of your older family members living abroad during the Coronavirus outbreak?

After you have finalised your story, please follow these instructions:

1) Please answer the Background questions below
2) Please go to Proceed at the end of the page.
3) Choose Submit, and your story will be sent to us.

We will ensure your anonymity throughout the research process. We will store all written stories without identifiers and we will not publish complete stories. In our research publications we may use direct quotes from your story, but we will carefully remove all identifiable information from these quotes. You can read more about our privacy and data protection policy from here.

In the above, you indicated that you would like to receive information about the results of the research and/or that you could consider participating in an interview after the restrictions related to the Coronavirus are lifted. Please leave us your email address in the textbox bellow. We collect email addresses only for sending information about the research results and/or to organise an interview (on your permission). We will store the email addresses separately from the collected data.

If you have written your story to the textbox above, you can go to Proceed and choose Submit. If you would like to send us your story in an attachment file, please follow these instructions:

1) Please go to Proceed below.
2) Check I want to send an attachement/attachements.
3) Choose Submit.

A new window will open up allowing you to send us the attachment. Please follow the instructions in the new window. Please note that after choosing Upload file in the new window, your story will be automatically sent to us.