UK policy discourse presents technology as a solution to challenges facing care services, including issues of quality and the mismatch between care workforce supply and demand. This discourse characterises technology as ‘transformative’, homogenous and wholly positive for care delivery, eliding the diversity of digital devices and systems and their varied uses. Our paper draws on data gathered through 34 interviews with care sector stakeholders and four in-depth case studies of UK homecare providers to comparatively analyse ‘storylines’ of technological solutions expressed by policy (macro-level), sector stakeholders (meso-level) and homecare managers and care workers (micro-level) alongside enacted experiences of technology-in-use. The ‘storylines’ presented by care sector stakeholders and homecare managers converged with those of the policy discourse, emphasising technology’s capacity to enhance quality and efficiency. Our case studies however highlighted several implications for care work and organisational practice in homecare provision: the technologies we observed sometimes produced additional tasks and responsibilities, undermining the efficiency and quality storylines. The experiences of care providers and workers engaging with technologies in homecare warrant further investigation and greater prominence to challenge a discourse which is at times overly simplistic and optimistic.

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This paper reports the findings of a thematic narrative review of peer-reviewed articles exploring innovation in UK independent homecare services published between January 2009-August 2021. Our analysis of 15 papers reveals four broad innovation types: personalised funding, operational models, workforce development and assistive technology. We conclude that research focused on innovation in independent homecare offers important insights into the positive and negative outcomes of different types of innovation for providers, care workers and people receiving care. There are, however, also areas which are neglected and need further elaboration, including more robust evidence of outcomes and clearer articulation of innovation processes.

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Time is a key organising principle in the formal provision of care to older people in their own homes. It is used when delivering homecare services, calculating fees and care staff’s pay entitlement. Research in the UK highlights how the predominant service model of compartmentalising care into pre‐defined tasks, delivered in strictly scheduled time‐based units, offers poor quality jobs, characterised by low pay, insecure and tightly controlled work. Our case study research of ‘new models’ of homecare however, found variation in the way time measures were operationalised. Drawing from Thompson’s (1967, Past & Present, 38, 56–97) conceptualisation of clock‐time (where care work is controlled by external measures of time) and nature’s time (where care work is performed through internal notions of time) as a lens, we examine how service delivery models and job quality are temporally connected through homecare work. Through our analysis, we exemplify how the use of strict time‐based measures can limit care work according to nature’s time. We also consider the potential of ambitemporality—the accommodation of clock and nature’s time—in organising service delivery as a means of enriching job quality. Finally, we discuss the pertinent implications of conceiving job quality in homecare work through a temporal lens.