Conformists, Innovators, and Rebels: Adapting to the Devaluation of Social Work in Home Health Care

This article emerged from a pre-dissertation, interview-based pilot study of a convenience sample of 14 home care social workers. The interviews occurred between August-December 2006 in the New York City metropolitan area. The study goal was to explore factors influencing the decision-making process of home care social workers regarding Alzheimer’s disease patients, paralleling an earlier study of home care nurses (Cabin, 2007). Both studies were prompted by a literature review indicating a dissonance between the need for psychosocial care by Alzheimer’s disease home care patients, statistically-significant evidence of effective psychosocial interventions to improve patient and caregiver outcomes, and government home care policy which does not cover such interventions (Cabin, 2006a, 2006b).