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Innov Aging
Innov Aging
innovateage
Innovation in Aging
2399-5300 Oxford University Press US 

10.1093/geroni/igaa057.1895
igaa057.1895
Abstracts
Session 5490 (Symposium)
AcademicSubjects/SOC02600
We Treat Them Better Than the Family They Have: Negotiating Aide-Family Relationships in the Home Care Setting
Franzosa Emily 1 Tsui Emma 2 1 
James J. Peters VA Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York, United States
2 
CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, New York, New York, United States
2020 
16 12 2020 
16 12 2020 
4 Suppl 1 Program Abstracts from The GSA 2020 Annual Scientific Meeting “Turning 75: Why Age Matters”571 572
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.2020This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Abstract
Unpaid and paid care in the home are closely intertwined, but a lack of outside supervision and support often forces family and non-family caregivers to negotiate care tasks and boundaries alone, leading to role conflict and role ambiguity. This analysis drew on two qualitative studies of home health aides (S1 n = 27, S2 n =26) to explore 1) aides’ perception of their caretaking role; 2) aides’ experiences co-producing care with family members; and 3) factors affecting these relationships. Data were analyzed through grounded theory and discourse analysis. We identified three relationship dynamics between aides and family members: independent, where aides and families provided care separately; competitive, where aides and families struggled over control of care tasks; and carative, where aides considered family part of the unit of care. We propose strategies for employer agencies to better support paid and unpaid caregivers in negotiating boundaries and co-producing care.