Hantering av kommunikativa problem i flerspråkiga möten i äldreomsorgen

Abstract

This article deals with communicative problems in multilingual care encounters in residential care homes for the elderly in Sweden, workplaces characterized by linguistic diversity. In these settings, proficiency in Swedish, which is the official working language, varies among care staff and residents. Limited shared resources in a verbal language might become an issue when one considers that elderly care practices are guided by the principles of person­centered care stip­ ulated in the Social Service Act, which establishes that care is to be performed in collabora­ tion with the care recipient based on mutual understanding so as to meet the care­recipient’s needs. The aim of this article is thus to explore how care staff and residents solve communicative problems in relation to this institutional normative context. Drawing on multimodal conver­ sation analysis, the article analyses four cases of multilingual care encounters, when the resi­ dents request for assistance with an object. The analysis shows how the participants collaborate towards the same goal: to solve communication problems in order to make the object identifiable for the care staff. When the achievement of mutual understanding is hampered by conflicting perspectives, meeting the resident’s needs becomes difficult. These results cast light on how person­-centered care is accomplished in multilingual care encounters, highlighting the com­ plexity of practices in these encounters.