The study deepening how the long-term recovery trajectory after stroke is about ongoing embodied, practical and socially situated negotiations. The study demonstrates that the recovery trajectory is a long term process of learning where the stroke survivor, as an embodied agent, gradually modifies new bodily habits, re-position participation and transforming of the self. Health personnel are usually available in the acute and early rehabilitation period. The three phenomenons under ongoing change; "body", "participation" and "self" are at this point just about being moved toward a renewed and a more coherent relationship in the stroke survivor long-lasting everyday life situated recovery trajectory. Available rehabilitation services at the municipal level supporting stroke survivors and relatives practical, social and interpersonal long-term challenges in everyday life can be important for minimizing their struggles and for promoting the experience progress, wellbeing and faith in the future.

This study explores stroke survivors' experience of being part of an institutional rehabilitation context and what it means for the immediate experience of discharge home. The aim is to develop a deeper understanding of how the dynamic phenomenon body, participation in everyday life and sense of self interrelates and changes through stroke survivors' movement in and between the two contexts and what this phenomenon means for stroke survivors' process of change and well-being in the early rehabilitation trajectory. Repeated, retrospective, in-depth interviews were conducted with nine persons living with moderate impairment after stroke and their closest relatives. Phenomenological and critical psychological concepts are used for analysing the data. Stroke survivors' experience indicates that their time as in-patients is important for their safety in the early juncture. Being part of an institutional rehabilitation context mobilizes stroke survivors' to optimize focus, energy and hope of physical recovery. At the same time it appears to postpone feelings of uncertainty and grief as well as reflection on their situation. However, immediately after homecoming a critical passage in the stroke survivors' rehabilitation trajectory appears because the perception of body, participation in everyday life and the sense of self undergo profound changes. This study stresses the importance of broadening the scope of professional initiative and paying attention to the post-rehabilitation context of everyday life during the in-patient stay.

However, little is known about older individuals' experiences and needs in the assistive technology device (ATD) service delivery process. The purpose of this study was to investigate older individuals' experiences during the service delivery process of ATDs.Nine older individuals were interviewed three times each throughout the ATD service delivery process. The interviews were analysed within a hermeneutical phenomenological perspective. The results show that the service delivery process could be interpreted as an enigmatic journey and described in four themes: "hope and optimistic expectations", "managing after delivery or needing additional help", "having available help versus being abandoned" and "taking charge or putting up".The results emphasise the need for occupational therapists to maintain an individualised approach toward older clients throughout the service delivery process. The experiences of older individuals were diverse and related to expectations that were not necessarily articulated to the occupational therapist. The situation when the ATD is delivered to the client was highlighted by the clients as an important event with the potential to facilitate a successful service delivery process.

Background: Norwegian government white papers have stated that the Sami population is reluctant to seek help from healthcare services and has traditions of self-help and the use of local networks.Objective: In this article we explore healthcare professionals’ discursive constructions of Sami persons with dementia and their families’ reluctance to seek and accept help from healthcare services.Design: The article is based on an analysis of focus group interviews with healthcare professionals (n = 18) in four municipalities in Northern Norway with multiethnic populations. A narrative context analysis, which involved an examination of sequences of discourse, was employed.Results: Reluctance to seek and accept help among Sami service users and assumptions about self-support were recurring themes in the focus groups. The reluctance was attributed to macro contexts, such as socio-historical processes and cultural norms, and to micro contexts, such as individual and interpersonal factors including the healthcare professionals’ cultural backgrounds and language competence. The healthcare professionals’ positioning as insiders or outsiders (Sami or non-Sami) affected their attributions.Conclusions: Local healthcare professionals are at the front line for providing and assessing service users’ needs for healthcare services. Consequently, their perceptions of service users’ needs are pivotal for achieving equity in healthcare. The established opinion that Sami “take care of their own” and are reluctant to seek and accept help may lead to omissions or neglect. Healthcare professionals’ awareness about how present encounters in healthcare settings are framed and shaped by the service users’ previous and prevailing experiences of marginalisation and subordination is crucial to avoid omissions or neglect resulting from assumptions about cultural preferences. Discursively shaped boundaries and differences between groups may create the impression that the distance between the groups is too wide to traverse, which in turn may lead to further marginalisation of service users in healthcare encounters.