Search results for ‘Subject term:"older people"’ Sort:
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Reaching out
- Author:
- HUNTER Mark
- Journal article citation:
- Community Care, 23.7.98, 1998, pp.20-21.
- Publisher:
- Reed Business Information
Looks at two projects intended to make sure elderly people receive the services they are entitled to without sacrificing their privacy or independence.
The meaning of confidence from the perspective of older people living with frailty: a conceptual void within intermediate care services
- Authors:
- UNDERWOOD Frazer, LATOUR Jos M, KENT Bridie
- Journal article citation:
- Age and Ageing, 50(5), 2021, pp.1802-1810.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
Background: Confidence is a cornerstone concept within health and social care’s intermediate care policy in the UK for a population of older people living with frailty. However, these intermediate care services delivering the policy, tasked to promote and build confidence, do so within an evidence vacuum. Objectives: To explore the meaning of confidence as seen through the lens of older people living with frailty and to re-evaluate current literature-based conceptual understanding. Design: A phenomenological study was undertaken to bring real world lived-experience meaning to the concept of confidence. Methods: Seventeen individual face-to-face interviews with older people living with frailty were undertaken and the data analysed using van Manen's approach to phenomenology. Results: Four themes are identified, informing a new conceptual model of confidence. This concept consists of four unique but interdependent dimensions. The four dimensions are: social connections, fear, independence and control. Each is ever-present in the confidence experience of the older person living with frailty. For each dimension, identifiable confidence eroding and enabling factors were recognised and are presented to promote aging well and personal resilience opportunities, giving chance to reduce the impact of vulnerability and frailty. Conclusions: This new and unique understanding of confidence provides a much needed evidence-base for services commissioned to promote and build confidence. It provides greater understanding and clarity to deliver these ambitions to an older population, progressing along the heath-frailty continuum. Empirical referents are required to quantify the concept’s impact in future interventional studies. (Edited publisher abstract)
Understanding the lives of older people with vision impairment
- Authors:
- PEACE Shelia, et al
- Publisher:
- Thomas Pocklington Trust
- Publication year:
- 2016
- Pagination:
- 8
- Place of publication:
- London
Research findings of a study to investigate the needs and aspirations of older people with vision impairment living in community settings in England. The study, which was commissioned by Thomas Pocklington Trust and conducted by The Open University, interviewed 50 older people, including older people aged over 85 years and people from minority ethnic groups. Interviews were also carried out with paid workers, relatives and volunteers to help understand the context of peoples’ lives. Areas covered in the interviews included: visual and general health; housing; support and interaction; living at home; activities of daily living; how to spend the day; going out; social isolation and loneliness; and self-worth, pleasure and the meaning of living well. Interviews were also carried out with paid workers, relatives and volunteers to help understand the context of peoples’ lives. The briefing concludes that support from family, friends, local and national organisations can help older people with visual impairment to maintain a positive attitude and live good lives. To enable older people with visual impairment to remain in their choice of home and community they also need to access to different forms of support and to know who to contact for information and advice on housing adaptations and social support. (Edited publisher abstract)
Relationships between objective and perceived housing in very old age
- Authors:
- NYGREN Carita, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Gerontologist, 47(1), February 2007, pp.85-95.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This study aimed to explore relationships between aspects of objective and perceived housing in five European samples of very old adults, as well as to investigate whether cross-national comparable patterns exist. The study utilized data from the first wave of the ENABLE–AGE Survey Study. The five national samples (from the countries Germany, the UK, Sweden, Hungary, Latvia) totalled 1,918 individuals aged 75 to 89 years. Objective assessments of the home environment covered the number of environmental barriers as well as the magnitude of accessibility problems (an aspect of person–environment fit). To assess perceptions of housing, instruments on usability, meaning of home, and housing satisfaction were used. Housing-related control was also assessed. Overall, the results revealed that the magnitude of accessibility problems, rather than the number of physical environmental barriers, was associated with perceptions of activity-oriented aspects of housing. That is, very old people living in more accessible housing perceived their homes as more useful and meaningful in relation to their routines and everyday activities, and they were less dependent on external control in relation to their housing. The patterns of such relationships were similar in the five national samples. It is concluded that objective and perceived aspects of housing have to be considered in order to understand the dynamics of aging in place, and the results can be used in practice contexts that target housing for senior citizens.
Eighty-five not out: a study of people aged 85 and over at home
- Authors:
- TINKER Anthea, et al
- Publisher:
- Anchor Trust
- Publication year:
- 2001
- Pagination:
- 144p.,tables,bibliog.
- Place of publication:
- Oxford
There are now over a million people in Britain aged 85 and over, and this number is rising every year. The majority of these live in some sort of communal establishment or institution and this study looks at the difference between the lifestyles of these people and those who still live at home. The study also looks at the types of housing, housing facilities and support services of very old people who still live at home. The research combines quantitative, qualitative and policy analysis and incorporates data from the 1991 census, the family Resources Survey and a Department of the Environment national survey, along with specially conducted interviews with 42 very old people and 18 carers.
When and why frail elderly people give up independent living: the Netherlands as an example
- Author:
- STEVERINK Nardi
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 21(1), January 2001, pp.45-69.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
As yet determinants of the need for nursing homes and old age homes are not clearly understood. This study focuses on the need for living in an old age home and a theoretical model predicts under what circumstances frail elderly people will express the need for living in such a home. Findings show that loss of comfort and affection are among the main predictors of strong orientation towards living in an old age home. Resources to counter the loss of comfort and affection-a spouse, income, home adaptations, private help, informal and formal home care-were only partly effective in deterring orientation towards living in an old age home. Pressure from others to apply for an old age home had the strongest effect. The findings are discussed and some implications for policy are considered.
Home alone
- Author:
- THOMPSON Audrey
- Journal article citation:
- Community Care, 19.10.00, 2000, pp.22-23.
- Publisher:
- Reed Business Information
Some older people prefer to live alone. There are many, however, who feel isolated, fearful and desperate for company and support. The author examines the barriers in the path to social integration for older people.
‘Old but not that old’: Finnish community-dwelling people aged 90+ negotiating their autonomy
- Authors:
- PIRHONEN Jari, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 36(8), 2016, pp.1625-1644.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
Autonomy is a pervasive concept in Western lifestyles today. However, people in the fourth age are assumed not to be autonomous but dependent on other people. The data of this study consisted of interviews with Finnish community-dwelling 90–91-year-old people. The study aim was to examine how these people see their own autonomy in their everyday lives. The analysis was based on membership categorisation analysis. Respondents considered their autonomy through three distinct themes. Functional ability was considered in terms of being physically capable of managing daily tasks. Independence in decision making was based on material and financial self-sufficiency and on the respondents' supposition that they were capable of making decisions due to an absence of memory disorders. Additionally, autonomy was considered as contesting norms of age-appropriateness. Among respondents, chronological age seemed to have been replaced by functional and cognitive ability as a definer of categorisations; age-others became ability-others. The study revealed that the perceptions of autonomy also included gendered features as they were linked with differing gendered ideals, roles and life domains of women and men. The results highlight the internal diversity among the oldest old and challenge the third/fourth age division. Instead, they suggest the existence of a certain ‘grey area’ within old age, and urge an analysis on the subtle meaning making involved in older people's constructions of age-categorisations. (Edited publisher abstract)
When practical help is valued so much by older people, why do professionals fail to recognise its value?
- Authors:
- BRANNELLY Tula, MATTHEWS Bob
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Integrated Care, 18(2), April 2010, pp.33-40.
- Publisher:
- Emerald
This article, drawing on the evaluation of a handyperson service which augments health and social services to enable older frail people to remain living at home, considers current trends and policy, and asks why practical help is under-valued by professionals caring for older people. While policy has promoted needs led services, research has found that services are risk-led and responsive to crisis rather than need. The Birmingham Handyperson Service, established as a response to unmet needs, and eventually receiving health and social service funding, provides free home maintenance by the organisation, with service users being required to meet the cost of materials. The authors surveyed 75 older people receiving the service. Findings highlighted the: cost effectiveness, especially to the NHS (where the cost of a single hip fracture offsets the schemes annual running cost); fears of older people in letting in strangers; changes to family models; complexity of need; recognition of dependency; health and gender inequality; and training and responsibility of the handy-people. Nearly 83% of the respondents thought that the Handyperson scheme was an important reason they were still living in their own home. The scheme also installed safety features into homes aimed at preventing falls, a responsibility that social services failed to provide within reasonable timescales. The authors conclude that the more informed policy makers are about practical solutions the better the situation and choices for older people.
Relationship between housing and healthy aging in very old age
- Authors:
- OSWALD Frank, et al
- Journal article citation:
- Gerontologist, 47(1), February 2007, pp.96-107.
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
This study examined the relationship between aspects of objective and perceived housing and aspects of healthy aging, defined as independence in daily activities and subjective well-being. It also examined the comparability of relationships between housing and healthy aging in the five European countries. Data were drawn from the ENABLE–AGE Project, from home interviews with a sample of 1,918 very old people aged 75 to 89 years living alone in their own homes in Swedish, German, British, Hungarian and Latvian urban areas. Participants living in better accessible homes, who perceive their home as meaningful and useful, and who think that external influences are not responsible for their housing situation are more independent in daily activities and have a better sense of well-being. Moreover, these results apply to all five national samples. The findings can widen the perspective when striving for barrier-free building standards, to encompass a holistic approach that takes both objective and perceived aspects of housing into account. Home modification and relocation should not be prescribed, but need to be negotiated with older adults to take into account their personal preferences.