The emotional climate of care-giving in home-care services

The emotional aspects of the care-giving relationship in home-care services are studied, starting from the home-care recipients’ and the home-care workers’ perception of the emotional climate. Their experiences of the care-giving relationship and the influence from different aspects of the care-giving situation and social processes in the work organisation are explored. Two hundred and twenty-two recipients and their home-care workers in three typical Swedish municipalities were studied. The emotional climate is described with the help of a scale of 85 adjectives. Results show that home-care workers are more likely to experience the climate with a higher degree of emotionality. There is symmetry between the parties in the perception of a negative climate. However, if one party perceives the climate as close the other party is more likely to perceive it as rational or instrumental. The organisational processes, especially the group climate of the work team, principally influence the home-care recipients’ perceptions. The workers’ perceptions are principally influenced by age and gender of the recipients and the workers’ own age. The emotional climate is constructed in a process between the parties, depending on their responses to each other. Tendencies to perceive a specific climate are strengthened or weakened by context variables and this in turn changes the care-giving interaction.