Experiences of home care assistants providing social care to older people: A context in transition.

AIM: The aim was to describe home care assistants' (HCA) experiences of providing social care in older people's own homes.

BACKGROUND: With the increase in average life expectancy and related growth of the elder population, addressing geriatric care needs has become an increasingly vital issue. However, the frontline workforce faces major challenges in meeting these needs, including a lack of trained professionals entering the field.

DESIGN: A qualitative inductive design was used.

METHODS: A descriptive, qualitative study using focus group interviews and content analysis.

FINDINGS: The findings revealed that HCAs are active in an area facing challenges due to an older home-dwelling generation. Transfer of tasks should be reviewed considering changes to the workforce's skill mix brought on by task shifting.

CONCLUSIONS: Certain prerequisites are needed to enable unlicensed assistive personnel to perform a good job; they also need to receive affirmation that they are a crucial workforce carrying out multifaceted tasks. To improve and maintain the pull factors of social care work, it is crucial to clarify how older people's requirements influence the daily care relation.

IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: The findings highlight HCAs' blurred responsibility when providing nursing and care to older people with multiple chronic conditions and functional disabilities. Increasing expectations are placed upon HCAs to cope with practical situations that are theoretically outside the bounds of social care. The findings contribute knowledge to further development of collaboration between social and health care providers as well as the important affirmation of this unlicensed personnel group in transition. A long-term plan is therefore needed to provide HCAs with the skills and tools they need to deliver care and support to older people with a variety of needs.