(In)Forming care: negotiating tensions in everyday information work in dementia care

Abstract

This article highlights carers’ information-related work of caring for community-dwelling older adults living with dementia. Within an institutional ethnography method of inquiry, two sets of interviews with 13 carers and five paid dementia care staff map out the social organisation of carers’ information work. Carers’ information work is organised by timescales of past, present and future. Paid dementia care staff’s work reveals the broader institutional agendas that shape and constrain the ways that family caregivers experience their information work. As carers contend with information that is ‘fluid’ and ambiguous, differing supports are required to agentively support carers’ information needs.