A Relationship-Centered Perspective On Home Care Work

This paper examines the complex dynamics of shift assignment in agency-based home care settings, emphasizing the essential but overlooked role of care coordinators. Drawing on 18 qualitative interviews with home care aides and coordinators from three U.S. agencies, our findings reveal the work coordinators do to enable the aide-client relationships at the heart of home care. Coordinators act as both logisticians and matchmakers, trying to meet the needs of their clients with a limited and ever-changing pool of aides, all of whom have their own unique identities and needs. To do so, they draw on their own relationships with aides and other coordinators. Home care management software assists coordinators, but it cannot function without the social infrastructure they help to maintain. This study challenges the current focus of both technology designers and researchers, advocating for a perspective that recognizes the importance of relationships in home care and the interdependence of aides, clients, and coordinators.