Entangled Amid Misaligned Seams: Limitations to Technology-Mediated Care for Repairing Infrastructural Breakdowns in a Youth Empowerment Program

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic broke down the human infrastructure of many community-based programs, disrupting in-person care services for low-resourced families. Yet, minimal work has explored how actors repair these breakdowns and how other infrastructures may interfere with repairs in such contexts. Interviewing adolescents and adults affiliated with a youth empowerment program, we used the pandemic to examine how a human infrastructure that previously facilitated a sense of community broke down and how members attempted to repair this infrastructure. While organized activities, resources, and interpersonal interactions aligned to facilitate in-person care that established a sense of community, incorporating information and communication technologies to align a sociotechnical infrastructure during social restrictions could not overcome multiple constraints imposed by other infrastructures that limited this sense of community. We discuss limitations to care and aligning together multiple disjointed infrastructures, calling for CSCW researchers to critically consider asset-based design as a methodology that might help sustain a community's well-being.