@phdthesis{e0c0ed81-a730-4ac0-ae36-41631b84776f,
  abstract     = {{This dissertation examines what older home care users do to make home care arrangements work in everyday life and what their actions show about Swedish home care as a care regime. It builds on and extends research focusing on older people’s own perspectives on care. Across the dissertation’s five articles, care users are shown to contribute extensively to the provision of the services they rely on. They adapt their daily lives to organisational routines, build continuity in services characterised by frequent staff changes, coordinate support across multiple providers, and develop relationships with care workers. They also often support staff working under pressured conditions. Together, these activities show that the provision of home care depends not only on professionals’ work but also on the everyday efforts of those who use the services.<br/>The dissertation originates in an ethnographically oriented qualitative research project including in-home interviews, home observations, and follow-up interviews, as well as diaries with older home care users in Sweden. Rather than focusing on organisations, policies, or professionals, it examines home care through the everyday actions and experiences of service users, adopting a microsociological, bottom-up approach grounded in symbolic interactionism.<br/>Care users’ agency, understood as situated efforts to influence everyday life, may take the form of initiative and protest, but also cooperation, adaptation, silence, and deliberate nonaction. To analyse this agency, the dissertation introduces the concept of regime competence to describe the knowledge and skills that older home care users develop in response to the conditions of a particular care regime. This includes learning how to organise time and relationships, coordinate care providers, and adapt to organisational constraints. Rather than<br/>being treated primarily as an individual attribute, regime competence is used as an analytical tool for understanding care users’ actions and, through them, the care regime itself. The competences people must develop make visible key features of Swedish home care, including fragmentation, time pressure, and poor continuity.<br/>By placing older home care users’ agency at the centre of the analysis, the dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of both everyday care and the organisation of Swedish home care.}},
  author       = {{Möllergren, Glenn}},
  isbn         = {{978-91-89604-84-1}},
  issn         = {{1650–3872}},
  keywords     = {{hemtjänst; Äldre; agens; omsorgsregimer; regimkompetens; Older adults; Home care; regime competence; Agency; care regimes}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  school       = {{Lund University}},
  series       = {{Lund dissertations in social work}},
  title        = {{Making home care work : Older adults' everyday agency}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/257951041/M_llergren_G_2026_Dissertation_Making_home_care_work.pdf}},
  volume       = {{76}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}