Working It Out Together: Family Caregivers' Perceptions of Relationship-Building With In-Home Service Providers

Abstract

Provision of in-home services to seniors involves the contributions of numerous professional and paraprofessional health-care providers but is largely dependent upon the involvement of caregiver networks consisting of friends and family members. Therefore, in-home provider/family caregiver relationships have become an essential component of care provision. However, evidence suggests that provider/family caregiver interactions often are lacking or are ambiguous and characterized by tension and power struggles. The purpose of this study was to explore family caregivers' perceptions of their relationships with in-home care providers. Applying interpretive phenomenology, the authors conducted in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of family caregivers and used an immersion/crystallization analysis strategy to elicit the findings. The findings reveal that family caregivers perceive their relationship-building with in-home providers as a dynamic process with facilitators and barriers encountered at both individual and system levels. The interpretive findings afford several insights into building provider/family caregiver relationships within the in-home context.