Captioned photographs in psychosocial aged care: relationship building and boundary work

In this paper we examine the use of a novel social technology to support the provision of formal aged care services to clients who live in their own homes. Social technologies offer enormous potential for enhancing aged care, but research on their use in aged care has largely focused on institutional or informal care settings, rather than formal care in the home. Meanwhile, technologies for aging in place typically focus on monitoring and security, rather than psychosocial support. We conducted a field study in which aged care managers used a photo and message-sharing tool to communicate with clients living in their own homes. Our findings demonstrate that visual and social forms of communication are valuable for supporting psychosocial care-giving, but there are barriers to effectively adopting new communication tools in this setting. Time constraints inhibited care managers' use of the technology, which was also influenced by their efforts to carefully maintain boundaries between their personal and professional lives.