Title: Navigating the “intersectionality” of Australian home care: Finding harmonious partnerships in caregiving for clients and in business
Abstract:
Australia is a diverse landscape with the Commonwealth government providing care for multicultural ageing and disabled populations through varying funded care packages. Home care can also be funded privately. Australian home care continues to be met with economic and political reforms in aged and disability care, with governing directions seeking to improve service outcomes while saving on care dollars. The home care marketplace has become more competitive, political, and commercialised. This presentation will expand on a PhD qualitative study that interviewed 10 business managers during a time of political change. The qualitative research methodology is underpinned by lenses of intersectionality and cultural competency theories and utilises a post-structural critical approach to give a unique view of emerging business practices in home care. The research shows how business leaders create partnerships in diverse care for clients and their families. Within these arrangements, there is an ongoing need to consider the cultural, linguistic and personal life care needs of the clients carefully with the homecare staff member’s skill set that works with the care recipients needs and wishes. At times difficulties in recruiting appropriate care staff and the impacts of governmental fiscal care funding has meant businesses are also required to find new ways to operate and model care to ensure timely and successful care of our most vulnerable populations. Deficits in staffing and finding the right fit for the client’s needs means care is often “brokered” to other organisations. Brokering care work is a new normal practice in Australian home care businesses and organisations. Remodelling home care services seems to be a contemporary harmonious act of agency when examining power relationships within the sector and how consumers and the government drive change.
