Boundaries Blurred and Rigid at the Front Line of Care: Care Workers and the Negotiation of Relationships with Older People

Those in management positions in community agencies, who oversee the work of paid care workers working directly with older clients, can adopt very different positions in relation to “blurred” boundaries and the defining of what is acceptable and unacceptable professional practice. In an interview conducted in a Sydney agency, one of the care workers describes the very different reactions of two coordinators, on two separate occasions roughly a year apart, to a very similar circumstance. The care worker describes the situation in which she found herself, the contrasting responses from management, and how these different reactions elicited a very different response from the worker herself.