Abstract
There are advantages to facility care, that cannot be had with home care. Not only are care staff permanently stationed at facilities, but a “group power” also exists among the residents, because they live together and all require long term care.
The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between group power and provision of individual care services by comparing traditional and new-type special nursing homes for the aged. New-type one with private rooms and common spaces in Japan, originally established for unit care, can provide individual care services taking advantage of group power. However this does not always go well. The reason is that group power is not always present, and therefore there is a need to create multilayered connections among individuals and groups. The task of this paper is to reveal the dilemmas involved in creating this power.
Reviewing the idea of the “Regenerative Community” as a way of explaining group power we see the predictor notions of “role” and “communality” emerge. In addition, by interviewing care staff working in both traditional and new-type special nursing homes using the Modified Grounded Theory Approach (M-GTA) , the predictor notions of “safety” and “freedom” can be found.
These results show that they are different types of group power, with both good and bad points. To connect group power to individual care, it is necessary to settle the dilemmas that arise from the four predictor notions: “role,” “communality,” “safety,” and “freedom.”
