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Design with care
- Authors:
- CHEVERST Keith, et al
- Journal article citation:
- New Technology in the Human Services, 14(1/2), 2001, pp.39-47.
- Publisher:
- Centre for Human Service Technology
This paper is primarily about design and some of the difficulties of ‘appropriate’ design in care settings: about the interaction between technologies, application domains, design methodologies and about some of the challenges of informing design. This is hardly a novel concern, but this particular focus arises as a consequence of digital technologies maturing and transferring to the everyday domain; as the convergence of interactive digital systems, networks and mobile devices potentially transforms the ways that we carry out mundane, everyday activities. In recent years, the increasing presence of computing technology in the domestic environment has emerged as an important new arena of study. Domestic environments are becoming key sites for the consumption of information and communication technologies - embracing, in the ‘care’ domain, various forms of ‘assistive’ technologies and the design and provision of ‘smart’ homes. This paper reports on a recently initiated research project ‘Care in the Digital Community’ - begun under the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Dependability Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (DIRC) Network project EQUATOR. The project aims to use a multidisciplinary research team to facilitate the development of enabling technologies to assist care in the community for particular user groups with different support needs. The general objective is to examine how digital technology can be used to support sheltered housing residents and their staff. Although only recently started, the project anticipates exploring the affordances of a variety of technological configurations, including the use of virtual environments replicating real world situations, and the use of handheld and wearable digital technology to provide support.
Reducing depression among older people receiving care: summary of intervention methods and findings
- Authors:
- LYNE K.J., et al
- Publisher:
- North Yorkshire and York Primary Care Trust
- Publication year:
- 2007
- Place of publication:
- York
Depression is very common among older people and often goes untreated. Common causes are loss of relationships through bereavement and loss of role. Another frequent cause of depression in older people is physical disabilities which prevent roles or activities which a person has especially valued. Difficulty in travelling outside one’s home is a common example. Others would be loss of valued activities like needlework, reading or writing through eyesight problems or arthritis. Depression is especially common within services for older people with many physical disabilities. Surveys have found around 25% of older home care customers to be depressed. Among another such group, older people who live in care homes, the proportion is around 40%. As life expectancy increases, more people suffer age-related physical disabilities. According to the 2006 White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: “One of the greatest long-term challenges facing the health and social care system is to ensure that longer life means more years of health and well-being”. This concerns all services for older people – health services and social care, nursing and care homes, sheltered housing and home-based support services. How can they respond to depressed older people in their care? This intervention project explored whether depression could be reduced among older people, living in care homes and typically aged over 80, through guiding their regular care staff to assist life-improvements which particularly mattered to an individual.
Allocation of care and services in an area-based system for long-term care of elderly and disabled people
- Author:
- LAGERGREN Marten
- Journal article citation:
- Ageing and Society, 14(3), September 1994, pp.357-381.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
In order to analyse the allocation of public care services in the city of Solna, Sweden, and how they changed in response to a rapid growth of the number of elderly people, a comparison was made between two surveys, 1985 and 1991. The analysis showed that older and non-married persons were more likely to become clients of the public care system. Institutionalisation was also more common among the non-married - especially for men. Reductions in institutionalisation had most impact on very old, non-married men. Functional disability and living arrangements were the most important variables in explaining the allocation of home help in domiciliary care and sheltered housing.