Values of Welfare Technologies: a Qualitative Study of How Employees in Swedish Care for Older Adults Understand and Justify the Use of New Technology

Background: In Swedish care for older adults, the use of welfare technology - for example, medicine-dispensing robots and GPS alarms - stimulates ongoing evaluations and negotiations. National policy documents, as well as previous research, indicate that these technologies are expected to improve the quality and efficiency of care but also involve potential or experienced challenges in providing high-quality care and the conditions for care workers - often portrayed as a conflict between political and caring organizational values. More research is thus needed on how the use of welfare technology is justified at central and municipal government levels as well as within care-providing organizations. This article aims to identify how the introduction and use of welfare technology is justified by employees and in policy documents pertaining to welfare technology in Swedish care for older people.

Methods: Qualitative interview data involving 37 individuals were collected in municipalities in southern Sweden. The interviewees were managers, administrative staff, and licensed practical nurses working in home care services or special housing for older adults, offering care 24/7. Policy documents and agreements of significance for Swedish welfare technology policy were analysed. The analysis focused on values promoted as significant for the provision of care and related to the use of welfare technology. Justifications and values were analysed as belonging to different 'worlds of worth', as either shared or conflicting, and contextually situated.

Results: The documents reflect values regarding, for instance, efficiency, independence, good working conditions, optimised use of human resources, and time to tend to relationships. The employees justified the use of welfare technologies with reference to optimisation and efficiency, activation and participation, dignity and freedom, social relationships, and good working conditions. These values represent three different worlds of worth - the industrial world, the civic world, and the domestic world - and are situated in employees' everyday work practices.

Conclusions: Values presented by employees and in policy documents are shared rather than conflicting. However, employees emphasise values associated with the domestic world, downplaying industrial values. We argue that politicians and civil servants should consider the situated judgements made by employees and develop more bottom-up strategies. This requires an acknowledgement of the existing values hierarchy, where values of optimisation and efficiency are held in high esteem but to accommodate higher values rather than as end goals.