Enhancing Community Care Through Digital Coordination: A User-Centered Approach to Expanding the Helferportal

Demographic changes are pushing communities of all sizes in Germany, as well as other ageing societies, towards a critical care crisis. Integrative, cross-sectoral care structures that combine the strengths of volunteers and commercial service providers are essential to meet the growing demand for care services and reduce the financial and emotional strain on family carers. For these care structures to be effective, they must be efficiently coordinated to maximize care capacity. A centralized digital coordination tool can transparently connect individuals in need with care providers and volunteers. Ensuring its acceptance and seamless integration into existing community advisory and coordination processes, however, requires careful consideration of the needs of the different actors involved in caring communities. We adopted a user-centered design approach to expand the existing Helferportal application. As a first step in this participatory research project, we focused on identifying opportunities for digitization in community care processes as well as defining software requirements and key features.Method: We conducted semi-structured interviews with (N = 23) care advisors, community coordinators, and social service providers in a district town in Germany to gain a detailed overview of community care processes and identify digitization opportunities. Audio recordings of the interviews were literally transcribed and analyzed in MAXQDA by structured qualitative content analysis.Results: Participants identified significant potential in a software application for the coordination of integrated care structures that include volunteers. A centralized digital booking and coordination system to schedule appointments or recurring services was recognized as essential for improving cross-sectoral care management and reducing phone-based communication in daily work processes. A privacy-compliant communication platform was also recommended to facilitate the spontaneous distribution of support needs among volunteers and professionals. Additional requests included digitizing documents for documenting advisory work and to streamline billing processes. Barriers to adoption included the need to build trust through in-person interactions and high usability requirements, underscoring the importance of a participatory approach in evaluating the future application. The findings underscore the potential of digitization to enhance care structures and to help mitigate the impending care crisis by fostering stronger, more connected communities.