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As in many Western countries, eldercare services in Sweden have changed dramatically over recent decades. Population ageing, ageing‐in‐place policies, pressures to contain costs and organisational reforms linked to New Public Management are challenging public home care. There is, however, limited knowledge about how the job content and working conditions have changed in the Swedish home care across this period. This article aims to analyse and compare the work situation in the Swedish home care in 2005 and 2015. The analysis is based on the international Nordcare survey and draws on the subsample of respondents working in Swedish home care 2005 and 2015 (n = 371). The data were analysed with bivariate and multivariate methods. The results suggest that, overall, the work situation of home‐care workers was worse in 2015 compared to 2005. For example, those surveyed in 2015 reported meeting a larger number of clients per day, receiving less support from their supervisors, and having less time to discuss difficult situations with colleagues and considerably less scope to affect the planning of their daily work. Care workers in 2015 were also more mentally exhausted than those surveyed in 2005. In addition, the workers in 2015 experienced an accumulation of work‐related problems. Deteriorating working conditions could be related to cutbacks and organisational reforms, and evidence suggests that home‐care workers are paying a high price for ageing‐in‐place policies. Improvements of the work situation in home care are necessary not only to ensure the quality of care for older people, but also to ensure workers' well‐being and to recruit and retain care workers, and thus, to meet the future needs for home care in an ageing society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Owing to many developments and changes in home care in the Netherlands, a national study on home help services was carried out. One of the aims was to examine the job content of the six new categories of home help, the differences in their work and the correspondence of daily practice with formal job descriptions. Six home help categories were examined: alpha helps; A home helps; B caring helps; C and D carers; and specialized E carers — self-registration forms and weekly reports were used for data-collection. For a period of 4 weeks, 458 home helps recorded on these forms all the activities they carried out during and outside home visits. The daily work of alpha helps, A home helps and B caring helps mainly involves housework and psycho-social/supportive activities, whilst B caring helps also carry out some personal care and C carers do some housework, personal care and psycho-social or supportive activities. The main work of D carers consists of personal care and psycho-social activities. Psycho-social activities are mainly carried out by specialized E carers, who also do housework, mostly together with the client. In daily practice, the four subordinate categories of home help carry out more psycho-social and reporting activities, and the three highest categories do more housework compared with their formal job descriptions. There also appears to be an overlap in the work of A home helps and B caring helps and in the work of C and D caters. An adjustment to formal job descriptions relating to the daily practice of home helpers is required, as well as more time for the extra activities home helps have to carry out. Finally, the overlap between various categories of home helps needs to be resolved whereby instead of six categories of home help, four new categories should be created. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]