journal homepage: http://kont.zsf.jcu.cz DOI: 10.32725/kont.2021.039 Typology of informal carers providing care to family members after cerebrovascular accident Miroslav Paulíček 1 , Lenka Krhutová 1 *, Iva Kuzníková 1 , Kamila Vondroušová 1 , Iva Tichá 1 , Hana Lukšová 1 , Petra Anna-Marie Blahová 1 , Veronika Valoušková 1 , Marcela Dabrowská 2 , Jarmila Kristiníková 2 , Petr Šaloun 3 1 University of Ostrava, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Health and Social Studies, Ostrava, Czech Republic 2 University of Ostrava, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Rehabilitation, Ostrava, Czech Republic 3 VSB – Technical University of Ostrava, Faculty of Electrical, Engineering and Computer Science, Department of Computer Science, Ostrava, Czech Republic Abstract Introduction: Te study is underpinned by the research of people providing care to relatives after a cerebrovascular accident outside the sphere of public institutions – so called informal carers. Te aim was to create a typology of these carers, refecting their way of constructing identity, their attitude to their own emotions, their refections on and experience with caring, their forms of communication, and how they work with information. Methods: Te research was led by a qualitative approach with the use of the principles of biographical research. It is based on thirty semi- structured interviews. Areas were identifed within these interviews in which the carers refected on themselves. Trough these areas, the carers difer in the ways in which they experience their roles of carers. Te research was complemented with a questionnaire survey in order to acquire demographic and other data from the same sample. Results: Te result of the study is a typology which contains fve pure types of informal carers who provide care to family members after a Cerebrovascular Accident (CVA): (1) rational, (2) self-construing, (3) depressive, (4) traditional and (5) optimistic. Discussion: Te results of the study are discussed in the context of caregiving in general, and in comparison with research focusing on the ways in which carers cope with decreased autonomy, emotions, gender, or their approach to obtaining information. Conclusions: Within the above types, carers difered in the variety of ways in which they controlled their emotions, in the diferent relationships to self, or in their refections on the future. Which category an individual carer fell into depended on the volume of care they provided, how long they had been providing it, the possibilities to obtain support or assistance, and the personality of the carer. Tis typology may be useful from the analytical perspective, as well as from the perspective of potential interventions aimed at the dissemination of information and the sharing of the carers’ experience. Keywords: Cerebrovascular accident; Informal carer; Typology * Corresponding author: Lenka Krhutová, University of Ostrava, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Health and Social Studies, Českobratrská 16, 701 03 Ostrava, Czech Republic; e-mail: lenka.krhutova@osu.cz http://doi.org/10.32725/kont.2021.039 Submitted: 2021-01-31 • Accepted: 2021-08-03 • Prepublished online: 2021-08-23 KONTAKT 23/3: 200–206 • EISSN 1804-7122 • ISSN 1212-4117 © 2021 The Authors. Published by University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. Original research article Introduction For a long time, both professionals and lay people showed lit- tle interest in informal carers. Te change in the attitude to informal carers which we have been witnessing over the last decades is primarily – although not exclusively – caused by the urgent need for a solution to the demographic trends of population ageing. In parallel with the situation in other coun- tries, informal carers in the Czech Republic have neither been sufciently identifed, nor systematically supported. “While it is possible to defne other focus groups by a certain social event (such as maternity by giving birth) or socio-economic characteris- tics (such as age in senior citizens or lack of employment in the un- employed), caregivers are a group that is largely non-demarcated/ undefned.” (Geissler, 2021: 56) Tis is refected also in the area of terminological defni- tion of informal care and informal carers. Tis area is highly divergent and difers in the depth and the breadth of the def- nition concepts, the purposes of the defnitions, the defnition criteria chosen, as well as the felds in which (or for which) the terminology is defned. For the purposes of this paper, we will proceed from the similarities found in these defnitions. In the absence of terminological consensus (if it can ever be achieved), terminological defnitions of informal care – and hence of informal carers – usually have the following in com- mon: “… informal care involves lay […] care conducted without any specifc professional education, without fnancial remuneration KONTAKT / Journal of nursing and social sciences related to health and illness SOCIAL SCIENCES IN HEALTH