Bodies at Disposal in Home Care Settings

Drawing on perspectives of care work as a collaborative and negotiated practice, this paper aims to explore how older service users actively contribute to care work and situations of care in the reablement policy context of homecare. The study analyses how service users in Danish and Norwegian municipal homecare settings place their bodies at disposal and how care workers' responses to service users' embodied contributions shape care practice and situations of care. Four ways of placing service users' bodies at disposal were identified: proactively, dependently, reluctantly and instructively. Care workers' capacity to attentively respond to service users' physical and emotional needs and their flexibility and adaptiveness in dealing with service users placing their bodies at disposal in various ways, seem to be key for care work as a collaborative practice that promotes dignity in care. The study applies affective ethnography as a methodological and analytical approach.