Comparison of Public and Private Home Care Services for Elderly in Gothenburg Region, Sweden 2013

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare and evaluate the public and private home care services for elderly given economic limitations after delegating them to municipality in the Gothenburg Region. The additional aim is to make politicians conscious about this development. The theoretical model of delegation and decentralization by Cristiano Castelfranchi and Rino Falcone (1998) and the Resource Dependency Theory by Pfeffer and Salancik (1978) constitute the theoretical reference frame. The study is based on an analysis of state regulation, policy documents and semi-structured interviews with the chief responsible for public and private home care services for elderly at the municipal level. This study reveals that the delegation of care for elderly to the municipalities faced some serious problems not to be solved until 2013 and surprisingly that these problems are especially seen where the recipients of such care don’t have a choice on their service provider. The lesson drawn from the research is that if politicians or other authorities take away the right from people to make their own decisions about their own lives, this inevitably results in dissatisfaction and subsequent reforms.