Supporting Informal Carers’ Independency Through Coordinated Care

Abstract

Dependency research in informal care has a long history. Studies within this area usually focus on the dependencies that care receivers have in relation to those providing the care: the informal carers. They usually take for granted the dependencies that informal care brings upon the carers. This paper draws attention to these important (unpaid) workers of our current society and discusses how engaging in caring can constrain one of their most valued personal attribute: their independency. Not only that, the paper discusses how coordinated care can come to the rescue of some of this independency, introducing a few simple but yet effective ICT solutions that can create opportunities for it. The findings presented in this paper come from rich ethnographic data collected within TOPIC, a European AAL joint project conducted across Austria, France and Germany. Finally, we show our research framework in the setting of informal care with the complexity and dimensions in human and non-human supported caring activities.