Caring and relations. On emotional interaction in home help

Sammanfattning: This dissertation examines the interaction between municipal home-helpers and care re-cipients from a social psychological perspective. One of the starting points is a critique of some classical works in the caring science inspired by women’s studies for not taking into consideration that care-giving work constitutes social interaction. The aim is to analyse how elderly people and the home-helpers perceive and interpret each other, what they expect of their mutual relationship, how they influence each other’s actions in their emotional interaction, and how the old person’s family and the home-helper’s work team influence their relationship. The empirical investigations, analysed with qualitative methodology, comprise thematically structured in-depth interviews with 48 home-helpers in six work groups, and 40 case studies of assistance cases, based on interviews with the old person (25 cases) and participant observation of the parties (15 cases). The home-helpers and the old people perceive their relationship as instrumental, friendly, emotional, insecure (recipients), laborious or charged with conflict (home-helpers). It is shown that what the old person and the home-helper expect of their emotional relationship is linked to social needs such as respect, acknowledgement, and appreciation from the other. These aims influence the experiences and actions of the two parties and, thereby, the care-giving work. Commonly, the home-helper subordinates herself to the old person or adapt to the recipient, e.g. by listening and “adjusting” to the old person. Psychological constructions play an important role in the home-helpers’ perceptions of the care situation in emotional conflicts. In escalated conflicts the home-helpers may act more impersonally and showing less care in the work. The old people may express confirmatory feelings for the home-helpers, deepen their dependence, and towards the home-helper they represent in various ways who they are and what they stand for. The old persons’ conflict actions can be understood as attempts to value themselves positively.