Designing for Dignity

Why Caregiving Is a System, Not a Role | Holly Larson on Family Care Design

September 16
54 mins

Episode Description

What happens when a family plans for care and the plan falls apart in a week?

Holly Larson spent two decades writing about technology for some of the largest companies in the world. Then her father was injured on a trip to Italy, and she and her sister found themselves running a care system at warp speed with no map for it. Nine years later they are still at it.

Out of that came Family Care Horizons, a care planning and decision architecture that helps families move from crisis-driven care to something they can sustain. Holly mapped more than 369 distinct tasks that families absorb when care begins, then built a framework to help them see the work, weigh its emotional intensity, and divide it fairly before a crisis forces the decision.


In this episode of Designing for Dignity, Erin Young and Holly get into why families end up as the integration layer of the healthcare system, what employers keep missing about elder care, and where CareTech is building for a buyer who does not exist.


WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

  • Why families become the care system rather than receiving one
  • How the care load framework surfaces work that stays invisible
  • What dignity guardrails are and how families set them
  • Why communication is the most neglected part of any family care system
  • How care archetypes help families assign roles to strengths
  • What employers get wrong when they treat elder care as a benefits line item
  • Why the most stressed caregivers are the least likely to adopt CareTech
  • What agency looks like for a family caregiver, and how it gets lost

ABOUT HOLLY LARSON
Holly Larson is the creator of Family Care Horizons, a set of decision frameworks for family caregiving and elder care. She is a B2B technology content writer with more than twenty years of experience, and she came to care work through her own family. For nine years she and her sister have coordinated care for their father through acute crises, medical rehab, home care during the pandemic, and assisted living. She writes five times a week as Your Chief Care Officer.


Holly on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollyklarson


CHAPTERS

(00:00) Introduction

(01:02) From B2B tech writing to care systems

(02:12) Italy, and two years of medical chaos

(05:41) The gap in how families decide

(07:42) The care load: 369 hidden tasks

(11:56) Care burden, gender, cognitive load

(14:16) Dignity guardrails

(17:14) Care archetypes and family roles

(19:54) When to start a proactive care plan

(22:12) Care stability signals and drift

(24:01) The caregiver who does not exist

(26:26) Treating care as a system

(30:57) Communication, the neglected piece

(33:56) What employers get wrong

(38:20) Where CareTech solves the wrong problem

(41:34) Making the care system visible

(43:54) Where design is most absent

(47:34) Nine years in: what she wishes she knew

(48:29) Care support 10 years from now

(52:15) Where to find Holly


ABOUT THE SHOW

Designing for Dignity is a podcast from Slide UX about how thoughtful design can enhance autonomy, connection, and quality of life for people navigating aging or brain change.


Topics: family caregiving, care planning, elder care, dementia, caregiver burnout, CareTech, AgeTech

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