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Home Care Experiences

Decent Essays

Contexts impact on care experiences
Contexts impact on care experiences
A more explicit finding demonstrates how the care work environment influence the relationship between home care workers, clients, and the families. Meyer (2015) conducted an anthropology research focusing on immigrant care workers from South America to Genoa, the city with the highest percentage of the older population in Italy, to provide private home care services. The study included focus group, group interviews, and individual interviews during 2009-2010. She approached the participants at Spanish-language church services, care worker training courses, and other immigrant events. Historical settings regarding the labor unions in Italy, social understanding, and political …show more content…

Meyer demonstrates how these immigrant home care workers engage self-engineering techniques or optimization to perform caring and being ideal workers with skills and knowledge. The use of relationship related to the clients’ family members or friends who play a role of informal supervisor. Knowing from the interview, there were 80% of informal supervisors were female relatives of the clients, which called Padrona (boss) in Italian. A female home care worker from Ecuador described how she felt the daughter of the client projected her frustration onto her by showing anger all the time. But then she mitigated the plight by telling the daughter that they both want the client to have good care, and be happy. Another case succeeds in managing employer supervisory behavior after built up a positive relationship with the client’s son, who is “capo (the boss)” in the family. He said to the home care worker “Go out when you need to, just make sure my mother is comfortable.” He showed respect and acknowledged that his mother can stay healthy is because of the care worker. The strategic relationship could begin with developing a positive and close friendship that allies with the Padrona or capo, and then managing employer supervisory behavior to build

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