Home care workers (HCWs) deliver essential health services within patients’ homes, yet, they are a marginalized workforce vulnerable to exploitation. Critical and liberatory pedagogies can foster material social change, but such pedagogies typically assume the involvement of a professional facilitator when, in practice, support programs are often led by peers with little to no facilitation training. This paper explores how peers can perform critical and liberatory facilitation practice in an online support program.

Home care workers (HCWs) provide essential care in patients’ homes but are often underappreciated and work in stressful and isolated environments with diverse and intersecting support needs. This paper describes a computer-mediated peer support program that centers around sharing circles: spaces for personal, narrative storytelling to encourage HCWs to collaboratively reflect on their home care experiences and build rapport and shared identity with their peers. Our findings show that participants engaged in multiple types of peer support, and we discuss how computer-mediated programs can address diverse needs that occur in intersectional contexts.

Awarded a Recognition for Contribution to Diversity & Inclusion.