scholarly journals Ethno-cultural diversity in home care work in Canada

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 77-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Martin-Matthews ◽  
Joanie Sims-Gould ◽  
John Naslund
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Daily Living ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Negative Context ◽  
Home Care Workers

Worldwide, immigrant workers are responsible for much of the care provided to elderly people who require assistance with personal care and with activities of daily living. This article examines the characteristics of immigrant home care workers, and the ways in which they differ from non-migrant care workers in Canada. It considers circumstances wherein the labor of care is framed by ethno-cultural diversity between client and worker, interactions that reflect the character of this ethno-cultural diversity, and the strategies employed by workers to address issues related to this diversity. Findings from a mixed methods study of 118 workers in the metropolitan area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, indicate that while the discriminatory context surrounding migrant home care workers persists, issues of ethno-cultural diversity in relationships are complex, and can also involve non-foreign born workers. Multi-cultural home care is not always framed in a negative context, and there often are positive aspects.

Working Conditions in Home Care: Negotiating Race and Class Boundaries in Gendered Work

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila M. Neysmith ◽  
Jane Aronson
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Home Care Workers ◽  
Depth Interviews ◽  
Case Basis

Home care work in metropolitan areas is a source of employment for immigrant women of color. Service work of this type intertwines domestic and caring labor in ways that reinforce the historically gendered and racialized nature of the work. Such macro level economic and political issues are played out at the micro level of daily service provided within elderly clients' homes. A study of these processes in home care work was carried out in urban southern Ontario in two nonprofit home care agencies. In-depth interviews and focus groups held with visible minority home care workers suggested that workers deal daily with racist attitudes and behaviors from clients and their families; agencies recognize these oppressive processes but usually handle them on a case-by-case basis through supervisors; and home care workers handle racism on the job as they do in their off-work hours—by avoidance, situating incidents within an analysis of the circumstances of elderly clients, setting boundaries on discussions, and occasionally, confrontation.

Home Care Workers’ Skills in the Context of Task Shifting: Complexities in Care Work

2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Barken ◽  
Margaret Denton ◽  
Jennifer Plenderleith ◽  
Isik U. Zeytinoglu ◽  
Catherine Brookman
Keyword(s):  
Home Care ◽  
Task Shifting ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Home Care Workers

scholarly journals Safety Trade-Offs in Home Care During COVID-19: A Mixed Methods Study Capturing the Perspective of Frontline Workers

2021 ◽  
pp. 6-17
Author(s):  
Godwin Osei-Poku ◽  
Ola Szczerepa ◽  
Alicia Potter ◽  
M.E. Malone ◽  
Barbara Fain ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Survey Question ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Virtual Focus Groups ◽  
Exposure Risks ◽  
Home Care Workers

Background: Home care workers help older individuals and those with disabilities with a variety of functional tasks. Despite their core role providing essential care to vulnerable populations, home care workers are often an invisible sector of the healthcare workforce. The transmission of COVID-19 and the nature of home care work raise several questions about the overall safety of these workers during the pandemic. Objective: To examine the experiences of home care workers during COVID-19, particularly their access to information about infection status, to testing, and to personal protective equipment (PPE); their understanding of guidelines; and trade-offs associated with protecting workers’ safety. Methods: A mixed methods study including qualitative analysis of guided discussion questions and quantitative analysis of multiple-choice survey questions was conducted. Eleven virtual focus groups in October and November 2020 involved 83 home care workers who care for clients/consumers in Massachusetts. Thirty-nine participants worked as personal care attendants (PCAs) employed directly by a consumer and 44 participants worked for an agency. Ninety percent self-identified as female and 54% had worked in home care for more than five years. Qualitative data was analyzed using thematic analysis, with identification of major and minor themes. Likert scale survey question data on perceptions of COVID-19 exposure, access to resources to prevent transmission, and perceptions of safety at work were dichotomized into agree or disagree. Results: PCAs and agency-employed home care workers were regularly faced with trade-offs between meeting client/consumer needs and protecting themselves from COVID-19 exposure. Twenty-five percent of participants reported serving a client/consumer who had COVID-19, 75% reported worrying about getting COVID-19 at work, and 29% reported thinking about stopping their work in home care. Despite a low pay structure, participants reported opting to risk exposure rather than to leave their clients/consumers without essential care. However, workers often lacked the resources (e.g., PPE, testing) to feel truly protected. This scarcity of resources combined with insufficient guidance and policies specific to home care settings led many workers to informally collaborate with clients/consumers to assess exposure risks and agree upon safety protocols. Focus group participants expressed uncertainty as to whether workers were truly empowered to ask for changes if conditions seemed unsafe. The burden of determining safety protocols was felt more strongly by PCAs who operate more independently than agency-employed workers who have supervisors to consult. Conclusions: Home care workers expressed deep commitment to continuing to care for their clients/consumers during COVID-19, but often had to operate with insufficient resources and under conditions that made their work environments feel unsafe. Their ability to identify exposure risks and make decisions on how to protect themselves often hinged on a transparent and trusting relationship with their clients/consumers. These relationships were particularly important for PCAs who did not have access to safety guidance from a home care agency.

Embodying Inequality

2018 ◽  
pp. 126-150
Author(s):  
Elana D. Buch
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Care Practices ◽  
Home Care Workers ◽  
Embodied Care

This chapter analyzes the embodied care practices at the center of home care work. The chapter argues that these practices generate deep but fragile entanglements between the lives and bodies of older adults and those of their home care workers. These practices involve forms of empathy that blur the boundaries between older adults’ and home care workers’ bodies and their personhoods. I show how home care transforms seemingly straightforward tasks like cooking into moral practices that help older adults feel independent. Home care workers’ bodies become the ground upon which moral hierarchies between persons are built, experienced, and justified on a day-to-day basis. Daily home care practices generate ways of embodying social hierarchies and shape individual subjectivities, thereby making those hierarchies feel morally legitimate.

Healthcare: The case of Japan

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Inoue
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Immigrant Workers ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Language Fluency ◽  
Staff Shortage ◽  
Local Staff ◽  
National Examination ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Technical Terms

Japan requires all of the healthcare practitioners to be qualified by national examinations and to be fluent in Japanese. Consequently, the number of immigrant workers remains very low, although Japan is faced with staff shortage. Even under the special bilateral arrangement that allows nurses and certified care workers from Indonesia and Philippines to practice temporally, there are very few who passed the Japan’s national examination: it is difficult for them to read technical terms written in Japanese, especially written in Chinese characters (Kanji). In care subsector, where wage is lower than physicians and nurses and qualifications/licenses are not necessarily required, the number of employed foreign-born residents is rapidly increased. Some local governments have started to support them to complete language and care-work courses. These facts show that language support is necessary if Japan considers that matching local staff demands is important for competitiveness. If Japan considers that development of inbound and outbound business leads to competitiveness, it is necessary for Japan to introduce systematic efforts to bring up foreign-born staffs, but language fluency requirement is not necessary in accepting foreign-born workers.

Job Stress and Job Dissatisfaction of Home Care Workers in the Context of Health Care Restructuring

2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Denton ◽  
Isik Urla Zeytinoglu ◽  
Sharon Davies ◽  
Jason Lian
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Organizational Change ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Job Stress ◽  
Peer Support ◽  
Organizational Support ◽  
Job Dissatisfaction ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Home Care Workers

Changes in the social organization of home care work due to health care restructuring have affected the job stress and job dissatisfaction of home care workers. This article reports the results of a survey of 892 employees from three nonprofit home care agencies in a medium-sized city in Ontario, Canada. Survey results are complemented by data from 16 focus groups with 99 employees. For the purposes of this study, home care workers include both office workers (managers, supervisors, coordinators, office support staff, and case managers) and visiting workers (nurses, therapists, and visiting homemakers). Focus group participants indicated that health care restructuring has resulted in organizational change, budget cuts, heavier workloads, job insecurity, loss of organizational support, loss of peer support, and loss of time to provide emotional laboring, or the “caring” aspects of home care work. Analyses of survey data show that organizational change, fear of job loss, heavy workloads, and lack of organizational and peer support lead to increased job stress and decreased levels of job satisfaction.

scholarly journals Heart Failure Training and Job Satisfaction: A Survey of Home Care Workers Caring for Adults with Heart Failure in New York City

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 575-582
Author(s):  
Madeline R. Sterling ◽  
Jacklyn Cho ◽  
Joanna Bryan Ringel ◽  
Ariel C. Avgar
Keyword(s):  
Heart Failure ◽  
Job Satisfaction ◽  
New York ◽  
Home Care ◽  
Foreign Born ◽  
Cross Sectional Survey ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
Home Care Workers ◽  
Adjusted Model

Background: Home care workers (HCWs), who include home health aides and person­al care attendants, frequently care for adults with heart failure (HF). Despite substantial involvement in HF care, prior qualitative studies have found that HCWs lack training and confidence, which creates challenges for this workforce and potentially for patient care. Herein, we quantified the prevalence of HF training among HCWs and deter­mined its association with job satisfaction.Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of agency-employed HCWs caring for HF patients across New York, NY from 2018-2019. HF training was assessed with, “Have you received prior HF training?” Job satisfaction was assessed with, “How satis­fied are you with your job?” The association between HF training and job satisfaction was determined with robust poisson regres­sion.Results: 323 HCWs from 23 agencies participated; their median age was 50 years (IQR: 37,58), 94% were women, 44% were non-Hispanic Black, 23% were Hispanic, 78% completed ≥ high school education, and 72% were foreign-born. They had been caregiving for a median of 8.5 years (IQR: 4,15) and 73% had cared for 1-5 HF patients. Two-thirds received none/a little HF training and 82% felt satisfied with their job. In a fully adjusted model, HCWs with some/a lot of HF training had 14% higher job satisfaction than those with none/a little HF training (aPR 1.14; 95% CI 1.03-1.27).Conclusions: The majority of HCWs have not received HF training. HF training was associated with higher job satisfac­tion, suggesting that HF training programs may improve HCWs’ experience car­ing for this patient population. Ethn Dis. 2020;30(4):575-582; doi:10.18865/ed.30.4.575

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