Collegamenti: digitally-mediated communication within the triad of aged care

The global population is ageing, this demographic growth is especially visible in western countries. It has a great impact on the world on many levels, economically and socially. Ageing often means declining health, which leads to increasing demand for aged care services and caregivers. Besides professionals, older adults often have family or informal caregivers, so in this work, I focused on the triad of aged care, a concept that considers all stakeholders involved in it: seniors, professionals, and informal caretakers.

As seniors age and their health and independence decrease, they tend to transition across the continuum of care, which is also a time of change of power, a delegation of control over decision making in senior's life, higher and different care involvement of their family members: from more practical aspects to advocating of seniors’ needs and being informed about care for their loved ones. Such transition also changes how care-related information is communicated.

In the North of Italy, residential aged care facilities are often subsidised by the local governmental authorities, the share of older adults is large, and primary family caregivers of older adults in the nursing are their children who are often older adults themselves, thanks to the long life expectancy and cultural norms.

The project Collegamenti was established as a collaboration between the Social Informatics research group at the University of Trento and the software company CBA Group. The project was funded by the Province of Trento and aimed at exploring whether introducing digital communication channels for family-residential care facility interaction could benefit aged institutionalised care.

More coming soon!