Care Activities

Care activities – also known as caregiving activities or caregiving practices – encompass all activities related to caring for and providing for others, which are collectively referred to as care and support work. Care activities are performed in all four sectors of the care diamond, but especially in private households. Their special characteristics become clear when we consider care activities for small children or seriously ill people. They are characterized by limited or non-existent capacity to act and thus limited autonomy, as well as by the resulting mutual dependencies and asymmetries (cf. Jochimsen 2003a). When providing care activities, a distinction is made between two components: the instrumental element, i.e., the specific professional activity, e.g., special nursing techniques, and the communicative element, i.e., the idealistic attention, e.g., talking to the care recipients, which – according to the assumption – is essentially determined by the adequate care motivation on the part of the care providers. Only both elements together ensure the quality of care activities and create the social dimension of successful care provision, referred to in the specialist literature as an integrative product (cf. Jochimsen 2003b: 45).