People with multimorbidity assessed for home-based rehabilitation: Supporting vulnerable and complex everyday life?

Resumé

This article examines people’s vulnerability and agency, existing in complex everyday life with multimorbidity, and created in the meeting with the municipal assessor about provi- sion/ non-provision of a rehabilitation programme or home care. The question is how the meetings support these people’s everyday lives or, by contrast, create additional vulnera- bility. The article’s basis is an ethnographic field study in a west Copenhagen municipa- lity, with 26 people, aged between 28 and 86, that have multimorbidity and are applying for home care or already getting it. The article’s three cases look at four key informants - one married couple and two people living alone. The article’s finding is that people are supported in an everyday life with multimorbidity when everyday life and challenges in daily life’s practical activities are not separated, and where the meeting with the assessor is grounded in the person’s everyday life with multimorbidity. Conversely rehabilitation potential assessment, entailing marginalisation of people’s everyday life with multimorbidity, and excluding from the meeting people’s experiences of a meaningful everyday life and need for help in coping with complicated everyday life, results in unequal access to rehabilitation and home care, and creates additional vulnerability among those with multimorbidity.