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This article explores how therapists when introduced as new so-called frontline ‘experts’ in home care work, become both discursive and embodied mediators for the managerial ideology of rehabilitation, and how their presence regulates the care aides’ subjectivities at work. We show how the managerial discourse of rehabilitation mobilizes the care aides to transform their identity from traditional nurturing to rehabilitation, as a result of promoting the latter as more professional. While the traditional managers/nurses promote the identity transfer through more classic discursive regulation at a distance from ‘the office’, the therapists do so through what we label performative regulation. Performative regulation is exercised by the therapists performing the desired role at the frontline and thus embodies the ideal and transfers it by embodied practices, not directives. With this notion of performative regulation, the article emphasizes the material, physical, embodied and performative dimensions of professional identity regulation.

This article seeks to understand a puzzling finding: that workers in publicly funded home care for older people in Australia, compared to those in Sweden, feel that they are better able to meet their clients’ needs, that their workplaces are less pressed, and that their work is less burdensome and more compatible with their family and social commitments. This finding seems to challenge expectations fostered by comparative sociological research that job quality and care services are inferior in Australia compared to Sweden. Informed by comparative institutionalist theory and care research, the structures and dynamics of the care systems in the two countries are analysed, along with findings from the NORDCARE survey of home care workers conducted in Sweden in 2005 ( n=166) and Australia in 2010 ( n=318). Differences in the work and working conditions in the two countries are explained by the dynamic interaction of national institutional and highly gendered sector-level effects.

Background: Municipal home care workers provide high-quality services to an increasing proportion of elderly people living in private homes. The work environments and working conditions of these workers vary to a great extent, implying rapid priority-making among both employers and employees to ensure that the work can be performed in a safe way. Objectives: This study aims to examine home care workers’ perceptions of health, risks, working conditions, and risk management within their organization. Method: The study was based on cross-sectional data collected from home care service staff in a municipality in the north of Sweden. Nursing assistants and care aides (n = 133) replied to a self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and between-group differences were analysed. Results: Home care work was perceived to require high levels of professional skill and ingenuity, a good psychosocial work situation, but required a high physical workload. The general health, the capacity and self-efficacy of the staff in relation to work were good. Difficulty in performing risk assessments and following safety regulations due to lack of time, equipment, and information were identified. Conclusion: There is a need to increase participation in risk assessments among the staff, improve management support, structures, and cooperation with other divisions of the social services and the medical care organizations.

Objectives: The present study aims to augment the network of home care around elderly. We investigate the nature of cooperative work between relatives and home care workers around elderly persons; present the CareCoor system developed to support that work; and report experiences from two pilot tests of CareCoor. Methods: We employed ethnographic fieldwork methods and conducted participatory design workshops to throw light on the nature of cooperative home care work, and to elicit implications for the design of an IT system that would support the work of relatives and home care workers around elderly persons. The design implications led to the development of a prototype, called CareCoor,which is accessible via a tablet computer and on the Internet. CareCoor was subsequently evaluated in two pilot tests. The first lasted a week and included three elderly, their next of kin and the affiliated home care workers, while the second test lasted for six weeks and involved five elderly people, their next of kin and relevant home care workers. Results: In the paper we make three major points, namely, (1) home care work is highly cooperative in nature and involves substantial coordinative efforts on the part of the actors involved, (2) the network of care around elderly can be augmented with new technology without elements of control and monitoring of elderly or home care workers, nor elements of remote care, (3) CareCoor, the prototype introduced in this study, shows promise as it was well received during test and evaluation. Conclusion: Home care work is increasingly important due to the aging populationsof Europe, the USA and large parts of Asia.Home care work between relatives and home care workers is inherently cooperative nature, and can be facilitatedand augmentedby new information technology such as CareCoor. The pilot tests of CareCoor revealed promising results and will be further developed andevaluated in a larger test. ObjectivesThe present study aims to augment the network of home care around elderly. We investigate the nature of cooperative work between relatives and home care workers around elderly persons; present the CareCoor system developed to support that work; and report experiences from two pilot tests of CareCoor.MethodsWe employed ethnographic fieldwork methods and conducted participatory design workshops to throw light on the nature of cooperative home care work, and to elicit implications for the design of an IT system that would support the work of relatives and home care workers around elderly persons. The design implications led to the development of a prototype, called CareCoor, which is accessible via a tablet PC and on the Internet. CareCoor was subsequently evaluated in two pilot tests. The first lasted a week and included three elderly, their next of kin and the affiliated home care workers, while the second test lasted for six weeks and involved five elderly people, their next of kin and relevant home care workers.ResultsIn the paper we make three major points, namely, (1) home care work is highly cooperative in nature and involves substantial coordinative efforts on the part of the actors involved, (2) the network of care around elderly can be augmented with new technology that allows all members of the network to follow, influence and be a part of the cooperative care of the elderly, and (3) CareCoor, the prototype introduced in this study, shows promise as it was well received during test and evaluation.ConclusionHome care work is increasingly important due to the ageing populations of Europe, the USA and large parts of Asia. Home care work between relatives and home care workers is inherently a cooperative effort, and can be facilitated and augmented by new information technology such as CareCoor. The pilot tests of CareCoor revealed promising results and will be further developed and evaluated in a larger test.