The role of objects in negotiations in convoys of care: Addressing fundamental concerns of informal caregivers

Due to an increased policy focus on informal care in many Western countries, professionals and informal caregivers increasingly grow more interdependent. Increased involvement of informal caregivers in professional care has consequences for the work of professionals, the care that is received by care recipients, and the role of informal caregivers. Care needs to be negotiated between them within the dynamic networks of care recipients and caregivers (i.e., “care convoys”). Scant attention has been given to objects as part of these convoys and negotiations. Therefore, in this paper, we answer the question: How do objects become part of and what is their role in the negotiations between healthcare professionals and informal caregivers? We use interview data from 48 participants (care recipients, professionals, informal caregivers, and persons in managerial positions). In the results, we discuss how objects, in terms of their affordances and the values they embody, become important in the relationship between professionals and informal caregivers and how they become part of negotiations on quality of care. We find that seemingly mundane objects become topics of conversation to address more fundamental concerns in how healthcare is organized for and provided to individual care recipients. Our study helps to open the care convoys model to objects as important actors and further understand the politics within care convoys.