Ageing home care workers’ belief in own capabilities to support a full working life

Background: There is a growing demand for home care workers to meet the needs of an ageing population and the changing home care service. Home care workers have stressed increased workloads and concerns for their own health. Many of them is also ageing, which causes increased demands in the changing working life. Belief in own capabilities to perform work-related tasks is essential for coping with demands and adapting to change. However, this topic seems to be under-researched among ageing home care workers.
Methods: An exploratory design with a qualitative inductive manifest analysis was used to analyse open-ended questions about what affected ageing home care workers’ belief in own capabilities to continue working until expected retirement age.
Results: A total of 234 home care workers gave 1060 utterances about what positively and negatively affected belief in their own capabilities to continue working. Categories that emerged were related to own health, workplace resources, meaningfulness of work, skills and knowledge, and family and private life.
Conclusions: Health, including deeper inner values of health, work conditions affecting health and meaningfulness of work, seem to be important for ageing home care workers’ belief in own capabilities to continue working until expected retirement age.