Interaction among Care Workers:

Focusing on Hidden Conflict

Abstract

This paper examines how interaction between care workers and their disabled clients influenced the latter's quality of life.
To facilitate disabled people's movements, care workers should act as their “hands and feet.” This means that they should help their clients in a subtle manner to avoid lowering the disabled peoples' self-determination. Earlier studies (Maeda 2006), however, found that care workers inevitably do influence disabled persons' levels of self-determination because their day-to-day decisions depend on the presence of a care worker. Hence, to encourage productive conflict (i. e., encouraging disabled people to ask for a favor without hesitation), this inevitable influence of care workers should be examined to evaluate its inherent structure.
Care workers may be unable to recognize the existence of this influence, and thus, disabled persons would not be encouraged to freely ask for help. Therefore, this paper asserts that not only the interactions and practices between disabled people and care workers, but also the interactions among care workers themselves, should be discussed.
The author interviewed a disabled person suffering from a motor neuron disease and his care workers and observed their daily interactions while living/working. Analysis of the qualitative data revealed that additional training such as communication coaching can improve care workers' skills and encourage them to expand their roles. The study also found that although the care workers can recognize hidden conflicts by observing other care workers, most were hesitant to advise or encourage others to alter their roles, mainly because they think that the division of roles is determined by the disabled person. This causes the care workers' roles to remain unchanged, become stagnant, and can create problematic situations.
These findings can help both disabled people and care workers to find better ways to address problems, which could help reduce hidden conflict.