A computer-implemented method for providing care

A method allowing a conversational agent 300 to converse with a user in which a user input is received and analysed simultaneously using a natural language understanding module 410 of an active sub-dialogue unit 400 and a natural language understanding module 510 of at least one background sub-dialogue unit 500. Each natural language understanding module is configured to identify, if present within the input, at least one intent from a list of predetermined intents associated with the corresponding sub-dialogue unit. An adjudicator 600 then identifies which sub-dialogue units contain a natural language understanding module that has identified an intent, determines which one of the identified sub-dialogue units meets a predetermined criterion, and selects the identified sub-dialogue unit to provide an output to the user. The output is determined using a sub-dialogue planning module 420, 520 and is based, at least in part, on the identified intent(s). An output is then provided to the user using an output generation module 430, 530 of the selected sub-dialogue unit.