Evaluating automated goals for home care support

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an approach to automating goals for supporting home care, with a view to understanding user experience when defining such goals and hence identifying improvements that could be made to the approach. Design/methodology/approach – The study was designed to answer the key research question of whether users can understand, formulate and relate to automated goals for home care. In order to do this, a fictional text-based scenario was used about a couple with care needs. This helped to explore the feasibility, acceptability and usability of goals to manage care at home. Face-to-face qualitative interviews were undertaken with ten participants with a background in social care: four social care professionals; one health care professional; one formal carer; one informal carer; and three end users. Findings – Overall, participants were positive about being able to control the MATCH (Mobilising Advanced Technologies for Care at Home) system through the use of goals....