Search results for ‘Subject term:"older people"’ Sort:
Results 1 - 10 of 44
Behind the headlines: the battle to get care at home
- Authors:
- PURSCH Benita, ISDEN Ruthe
- Publisher:
- Age UK
- Publication year:
- 2018
- Pagination:
- 10
- Place of publication:
- London
This report illustrates the experiences of many older people and their families as they try to get the care at home they need. It finds that the provision of homecare services has fallen by three million hours since 2015. The report notes that the average spend per adult on social care fell 13 per cent, from £439 to £379, between 2009/10 and 2016/17. Over the same period around 400,000 fewer older people received social care, as eligibility criteria were tightened by councils trying to ‘square an impossible circle’ of rising demand and falling funds. The report argues that the impact of council funding cuts has spread throughout the care system, with older people finding increasingly difficult to assert their legal rights and access the home care they require to live independently at home, even when they are clearly profoundly unwell and even at risk. Key issues include: long waits to get an assessment – the entry point to the care system; care services that are disjointed or simply unresponsive; social services declining to get involved; fundamental lack of capacity in the system; poor quality services and support; support and services being cut back, even though people’s needs have stayed the same or even increased; vital help for families providing care being cut back. (Edited publisher abstract)
Unmet home care service needs of rural older adults with Alzheimer's disease: a perspective of informal caregivers
- Authors:
- LI Hong, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 55(5), July 2012, pp.409-425.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
- Place of publication:
- Philadelphia, USA
A majority of rural older adults with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) live at home and are cared for by informal caregivers. Services designed to assist older adults and their caregivers, such as meals-on-wheels and in-home personal care, may be less accessible in rural communities. The aim of this study was to assess the unmet service needs of rural older adults with AD and to identify factors that were related to these needs. Data were collected during in-depth telephone interviews conducted with 109 informal caregivers of AD patients in central Illinois. The findings indicated that over half of the patients experienced unmet service needs in 1 or more areas of activities of daily functioning. Informal caregiver burden and patient's gender and functional status were significantly related to patients' unmet service needs. Patients' use of formal services was marginally related to their unmet service needs. The article concludes that a comprehensive needs assessment should be conducted with both patients and their caregivers in order to better address patients' service needs.
Social determinants of older adults’ awareness of community support services in Hamilton, Ontario
- Authors:
- TINDALE J., et al
- Journal article citation:
- Health and Social Care in the Community, 19(6), November 2011, pp.661-672.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Community support services (CSSs), such as food services, transportation services, and volunteer visiting, enable persons coping with health or social issues to continue to live in the community. However, lack of awareness can lead to these services being underutilised. This study aimed to determine middle-aged and older adults’ awareness of CSSs and to identify the relationship between the social determinants of health and awareness of CSSs. In a telephone interview, 1152 community-dwelling older adults from Ontario, Canada were asked to read a series of 4 vignettes and whether they were able to identify a CSS they could turn to in that situation. Across the 4 vignettes, 40% of participants did name a CSS as a possible source of assistance. The respondents most likely to have awareness of CSS include the middle-aged and higher-income groups. Being knowledgeable about where to look for information about CSSs, having social support and being a member of a club or voluntary organisations are also significant predictors of awareness of CSSs. The results suggest that efforts be made to improve the level of awareness and access to CSSs among older adults by targeting their social networks as well as their health and social care providers.
Post acute care of the elderly in Singapore
- Author:
- GOH Soon Noi
- Journal article citation:
- Asia Pacific Journal of Social Work and Development, 21(1), June 2011, pp.31-53.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This paper is concerned with understanding the family care of elderly people and their use of post-acute care services such as community hospitals, nursing homes, day rehabilitation centres, and home care. The use of post-acute care services is a result of a complex, inter-related set of physical, social, psychological, organisational, and environmental factors. The aim of this multi-method study was to use Andersen Behavioural Model of Health Service Use to explore how these factors are associated with the use of post-acute care services. The study involved: a survey of 299 elderly patients from a public acute-care hospital using a structured questionnaire; in-depth interviews with 13 of these patients and their family members; and 3 focus groups with service providers. The survey showed that the following factors are associated with the use of post-acute care services: medical and physical conditions; perceived health and utility; knowledge and previous use of service; ethnicity; family size; paid help; housing type; and living arrangements. The results from the interviews and focus group discussions consistently pointed to the affordability of services as an important factor. The question of service accessibility and its implications on practice, policy and research are discussed.
Creating and sustaining disadvantage: the relevance of a social exclusion framework
- Authors:
- GRENIER Amanda M., GUBERMAN Nancy
- Journal article citation:
- Health and Social Care in the Community, 17(2), March 2009, pp.116-124.
- Publisher:
- Wiley
Over the last decade, public home-care services for elderly people have been subject to increased rationing and changes in resource allocation. The authors argue that a social exclusion framework can be used to explain the impacts of current policy priorities and organisational practices. The framework of social exclusion is to highlight the disadvantages experienced by elderly people, particularly those who cannot afford to supplement public care with private services. The argument is illustrated by drawing on examples from previous studies with persons giving and receiving care in the province of Quebec. The focus is on seven forms of exclusion: symbolic, identity, socio-political, institutional, economic, exclusion from meaningful relations, and territorial exclusion. These illustrations suggest that policy-makers, practitioners and researchers must address the various ways in which current policy priorities can create and sustain various types of exclusion of elderly people. They also highlight the need to reconsider the current decisions made regarding the allocation of services for elderly people.
The great home care divide
- Author:
- TICKLE Louise
- Journal article citation:
- Community Care, 19.04.07, 2007, pp.28-29.
- Publisher:
- Reed Business Information
The author looks at why domiciliary care in some areas can be free and easily accessible while in others it is costly and restricted.
What are the most effective and cost-effective services for informal carers of older people?
- Author:
- RESEARCH IN PRACTICE FOR ADULTS
- Publisher:
- Research in Practice for Adults
- Publication year:
- 2006
- Pagination:
- 6p.
- Place of publication:
- Dartington
Since the community care reforms of the early 1990s, practical support for informal carers has become one of the key building blocks of community care policy in England and Wales. In 2004, Linda Pickard wrote a report for the Audit Commission called 'The Effectiveness and Cost-effectiveness of Support and Services for Informal Carers of Older People'. This summary highlights the key points. The focus is on five services: day respite care, residential respite care, in-home respite, social work/counselling and home care.
Rural older adults' access barriers to in-home and community-based services
- Author:
- LI Hong
- Journal article citation:
- Social Work Research, 30(2), June 2006, pp.109-118.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This American study identified specific access barriers to seven commonly used in-home and community-based services (HCBS) and examined factors that were related to barriers to these services. The data used in this study were extracted from the 1999 National Long Term Care Survey and included 283 dyads of rural older adults and their caregivers. The HCBS to which caregivers most frequently reported access barriers were respite care, transportation, and homemaker services. Although access barriers varied depending on individual services, the main access barriers were unavailability, unawareness, and affordability of HCBS. Findings showed that predisposing, enabling, and need factors had differential influence on access barriers to individual services. The older adult's race, educational attainment, and Medicaid enrolment were significant predictors of access barriers to homemaker services. The older adult's educational attainment and annual household income were significant predictors of access barriers to home modification services. Implications of these findings for social work practice are discussed.
Promoting independence for wheelchair users: the role of home accommodations
- Authors:
- ALLEN Susan, RESNIK Linda, ROY Jason
- Journal article citation:
- Gerontologist, 46(1), February 2006, pp.115-123.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
The objective of this research was to investigate whether home accommodations influence the amount of human help provided to a nationally representative sample of adults who use wheelchairs. The authors analyzed data from the Adult Disability Follow-back Survey (DFS), Phase II, of the Disability Supplement to the 1994–1995 National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS-D). The analytic sample consisted of 899 adults aged 18 and older who reported using wheelchairs in the previous 2 weeks. The authors conducted logistic regression and ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analyses to test the influence of home accommodations on the receipt of any human help, and among respondents who received help, on the hours of help received, respectively. The authors analyzed paid and unpaid help separately. Home accommodations were related to the receipt of unpaid, but not paid, help. Relative to having no home accommodations, the presence of each additional accommodation decreased the odds of having unpaid help by 14%. Additionally, the authors observed an inverse relationship between the number of accommodations in the home and hours of unpaid help. For wheelchair users who live alone, specific types of home accommodations were also inversely related to hours of unpaid help. Policies that reimburse for home accommodations may be an efficient response to the growing demand for home-care support while enabling greater autonomy and independence for people who use wheelchairs.
What price care in old age?: three years on from SPAIN’s underfunding of social care paper, what has changed?
- Author:
- AGE CONCERN
- Publisher:
- Age Concern
- Publication year:
- 2005
- Place of publication:
- London
The report exposes the budget rationing and age discrimination that continues to starve older people of the care they need. Though older people make up 62% of social services’ clients, they only see 47% of the budget because funds are ‘creamed off’ to pay for other adults’ services. And local authorities are still paying lower rates for older people’s residential care than for other groups – in 2004 local authorities were only prepared to pay an average of £377 for older people, while younger adults were offered £447 to £734. Funding shortages mean that crucial services for older people are being cut or diminished. Cleaning and housework services, respite, transport and mobility aids can make or break an older person’s independence, but these are being severed across the country. The number of households receiving home care has gone down by a quarter since 1997. Home care services and mobility equipment are crucial for helping to prevent older people from needing expensive hospital stays or moving into a care home. For the want of a grab rail costing around £25 or a ramp costing £150 ramp, an older person may suffer falls that require a stay on an acute ward costing approximately £1,285.