Hänsynstagandets paradoxer : Om äldre, närstående och biståndshandläggare vid flytt till särskilt boende

Many older people express strong preferences to remain in their own housing as long as possible. Due to declining health they may, however, become dependent on others for their daily care, eventually reaching a point where they consider relocation to a residential home. The overall aim of the dissertation is to reveal the process preceding older people’s potential relocation from ordinary housing to a residential home in a societal context, and to study how older people, their family members and care managers experience and describe the process individually and in relation to each other. The first article of the dissertation is based on older people’s perspective, the second on family members’ perspective, and the third on the care managers’ perspective. In the fourth article a theoretical model is used in order to focus on why the care managers tend to apply a restrictive approach in their occupational exercise. An analysis based on a holistic perspective is presented in the introductory chapter of the compilation thesis.

To try to understand what happens when older people consider relocation from ordinary housing to a residential home, various theoretical approaches have been applied. Altogether 21 older people, 17 family members, and seven care managers have contributed to the empirical material, mainly in interviews. From a holistic perspective, attention is drawn to expressions of “consideration” as a prominent feature in the process when older people’s potential relocation to a residential home comes to the fore. As a result, different expressions of consideration reveal that those involved use the ideals of older people’s independence and self-determination in order to justify personal actions and attitudes. By consideration, nobody is prepared to take the full responsibility for the decision, and instead the responsibility for a potential relocation decision is located at somebody or something else. The ideals of an older person’s independence and self-determination are promoted, at the same time as the application of these ideals in reality becomes significantly limited, like in “paradoxes of consideration”.