This thesis is an examination of the definition and implementation of ‘good practice’ in residential care for senior citizens. The central contention is that ‘good practice’ is a term that has been variously defined. Different groups define it in different ways, and their definitions have changed over time. This reflexive qualitative study explores ‘good practice’ in local authority, voluntary and private residential care homes in Scotland from the perspective of policy, practice and the experience of senior citizens who live in them. The study is based on analysis of policy documents, historical studies, and reanalysed interview and survey data from two earlier studies conducted by the author and colleagues. The thesis shows that the notion of ‘good practice’ that emerges in policy and practice documents is a confused and often conflicting set of ideas. Historically, the earliest were driven by concerns over cost. In more modern times, statements about ‘good practice’ have had a more benevolent intent but are frequently flawed by paternalistic and ageist assumptions. It is shown that staff in residential homes typically adopt a different set of attitudes: their preoccupation is with safety and the avoidance of risk. Although benevolent in intention, these interpretations of ‘good practice’ are also at variance with what residents themselves actually want. Two particular models or styles of care are examined in detail. One of these is the use of ‘keyworkers’, often implemented in ways that fail to realise its potential. The other is the ‘hotel’ model of care. The potential of this model as an alternative to the statutory model is explored. The thesis concludes that it is a model that can realise the goal of enabling residents to exercise independence, choice and privacy while meeting their needs in residential care.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 laisenavarrojardim.pdf: 1606391 bytes, checksum: 915b5b916238cb0c93c9e63794756a47 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-02 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Considerando o expressivo aumento do número de casos de infecções pelo HIV/aids na terceira idade, os mitos e preconceitos acerca da sexualidade dessas pessoas e suas dificuldades de acesso aos serviços de saúde, a problemática desta investigação em psicologia social apresenta sua relevância social e científica. A presente pesquisa de mestrado teve por objetivo investigar as políticas públicas em HIV/aids destinadas aos idosos, analisando os discursos e os dispositivos de saber/poder que as constituem, problematizando as concepções dos profissionais de saúde que atuam no Serviço de Assistência Especializada (SAE) e na Estratégia de Saúde da Família (ESF) da cidade de Juiz de Fora, no que se refere à aids na terceira idade e sua atuação profissional diante dessas políticas. As informações foram coletadas por meio de pesquisa documental e de campo, contemplando informações sobre as políticas públicas em HIV/aids, do Ministério da Saúde, voltadas ao público idoso e as concepções de profissionais de saúde que atuam no Serviço de Assistência Especializada (SAE) e na Estratégia de Saúde da Família (ESF) do município de Juiz de Fora. A análise dos dados, amparada no referencial teórico de Michel Foucault, teve como recurso metodológico fundamental a análise do discurso, procurando compreender os jogos de enunciação e as formações discursivas que atravessam e constituem as políticas públicas e as concepções dos profissionais da área da saúde. Através da pesquisa, foi possível constatar uma grande carência de políticas públicas de prevenção e assistência específicas para a questão da aids na terceira idade, o que tem resultado em implicações diretas no que se refere às concepções e práticas de profissionais em saúde, uma vez que suas atuações estão intrinsecamente ligadas às preconizações do Ministério da Saúde. Práticas estas, que, ao não priorizarem os aspectos preventivos e assistenciais referentes ao HIV/aids na terceira idade, acabam por deixar tal problemática cada vez mais invisível aos órgãos competentes e à sociedade. / Considering the notable increase in the number of cases of infection by HIV/aids in senior citizens, the myths and prejudices regarding the sexuality of such people and their difficulties in accessing health services, the issue of such investigation on social psychology presents its social and scientific relevance. The present master‘s degree research had as its goal to investigate the public policies on HIV/aids aimed to senior citizens, analyzing their discourses and the knowledge/power devices that constitute them, discussing the conceptions by health care professionals who work at the Specialized Assistance Service (SAE, in Portuguese) and at the Family health Strategy (ESF, in Portuguese) in the city of Juiz de Fora, as it refers to aids among senior citizens and their professional actions regarding such policies. The information was gathered by means of a document and field survey, contemplating information about public policies on HIV/aids of the Health Ministry aimed at the senior population and the conceptions of health care professionals who work at the Specialized Assistance Service (SAE, in Portuguese) and at the Family health Strategy (ESF, in Portuguese) in the city of Juiz de Fora. Data analysis, supported by the theoretical reference of Michel Foucault, had as its fundamental methodological resource the discourse analysis, attempting to comprehend the enunciation games and the discourse formations which permeate and constitute the public policies and the conceptions by the health care professionals. Through the research it was possible to detect a great lack of public policies of prevention of assistance specific to the matter of aids among senior citizens, which has resulted in direct implications regarding the conceptions and practices of the health care professionals, since their actions are intrinsically tied to the guidelines by the Health Ministry. Such practices, by not prioritizing the preventive and assistance aspects referring to HIV/aids among senior citizens, leave such issues ever more invisible to society‘s competent sectors.

For the first time ever, mobile payments in Sweden have overtaken cash as the preferred method of payment when it comes to monthly payments. With cashless payments growing in Sweden and all over the world it is clear that mobile payment methods are going to increase in our everyday lives. As elders tend to have more difficulties learning and understanding software, it is not unlikely that this will affect the adoption of mobile payment methods. As cash is rapidly disappearing as a payment method in Sweden it is important to gain insight into which factors affect the acceptance of mobile payment methods among senior citizens, as they are the most frequent users of cash today. This is a qualitative case study where five seniors have been interviewed about their opinions on mobile payments based on a theoretical model of mobile adoption consisting of eleven variables. The interviews came to center around the Swedish mobile payment application Swish as it was the only mobile payment service that the participants were aware of and had experience using. The study’s goal is to gain knowledge of what variables are of importance to the senior consumers when deciding whether or not to adopt a mobile payment system. The main findings of the study are that the variables: social influence, attractiveness of alternatives and trust are the variables that have been seen to affect the senior citizens' adoption of mobile payment the most.

(in English): The work deals with issue of social worker's role in hospital from point of view of medical social workers working with senior citizens. In theoretical part is presented profession of medical social worker and its specifics in Czech Republic: history, legislation, education, competences and a role of medical social worker in multidisciplinary team. It is focused also on health care and social services provided to the target group of senior citizens in our country. Practical part is focused on presentation and interpretation of data gained from qualitative research which was realized by semi-structural interviews with medical social workers in chosen faculty hospitals in Prague. Keywords (in English): social work in health care, medical social worker, senior citizens, social services, health care services

[pt] Este estudo investiga os significados atribuídos ao lazer por consumidores de Terceira Idade que frequentam grupos de reunião musical e aulas de dança de salão. Especificamente, buscou-se estudar a experiência desses consumidores em atividades de lazer em grupo e de que forma atribuem significado às vivências e às relações sociais e de amizade que ocorrem em espaços sociais de lazer. No contexto desta pesquisa, o consumo de lazer não é visto apenas por seu aspecto utilitário, mas é compreendido a partir de seu conteúdo simbólico, em que os consumidores atribuem significados ao consumo expressando seus valores, estilos de vida, categorias, identidades sociais e projetos coletivos. Ao privilegiar, a dimensão simbólica do consumo sob a perspectiva de marketing, o presente estudo se insere em uma linha de estudos em marketing que se apresenta como CCT – Consumer Culture Theory. Nesse contexto, a presente tese se filia ao paradigma interpretativo, ao partir dos aspectos subjetivos do consumo para perceber as relações dinâmicas das ações de consumidores e os significados socialmente construídos. Para condução do presente estudo, optou-se por utilizar métodos de inspiração etnográfica – a observação participante e as entrevistas em profundidade – buscando fazer parte da experiência vivida pelo idoso para compreender os significados a ela atribuídos. A pesquisa de campo incluiu dois grupos de idosos. O primeiro grupo é um encontro musical de seresta, sendo realizada a observação participante por um período de aproximadamente seis meses. As entrevistas em profundidade foram realizadas com 15 idosos participantes do grupo e com o fundador e líder do grupo. O segundo grupo estudado é voltado para dança de salão. Novamente, foi feita a observação participante durante um período de seis meses e entrevistas em profundidade com 16 idosos participantes. Os registros em diário de campo e as entrevistas foram analisados conjuntamente e permitiram identificar os significados que os idosos associam ao consumo das atividades de lazer analisadas. Realizou-se, inicialmente, uma análise de cada atividade de lazer. Para cada grupo, os significados identificados emergiram das análises. Em seguida, foi feita uma análise cruzada dos resultados obtidos para os dois grupos. Verificou-se que, embora possa haver significados comuns às atividades de lazer, há também significados distintos atribuídos à mesma atividade e a diferentes atividades. Estes resultados sugerem a existência de grande variedade de necessidades por detrás das escolhas de lazer dos idosos. Tais resultados sugerem ainda que a pesquisa sobre lazer de idosos deve levar em conta a heterogeneidade deste grupo de consumidores, evitando trata-los de forma reducionista, como se se tratasse de grupo homogêneo, caracterizado unicamente a partir de suas dificuldades físicas. Já no que se refere à aplicação empresarial, os resultados do estudo sugerem que os consumidores idosos podem ser segmentados a partir de distintos significados atribuídos ao lazer, que parecem traduzir os benefícios buscados por esses consumidores. / [en] This study investigates the meanings of leisure for the elderly people who attend a musical encounter and a ballroom dancing class. Specifically, the study investigates these consumers experience of leisure group activities; and how they extract meaning from these experiences and from the social relationships that occur in these social spaces of leisure. In the context of this research, consumption is not seen only by its utilitarian nature, but it is rather understood in its symbolic aspects, as consumers create meanings in order to express their values, lifestyles, categories, social identities, and collective projects. By focusing on the symbolic dimension of consumption from the marketing perspective, this study is positioned as part of a line of research in marketing known as CCT - Consumer Culture Theory. In this context, this thesis is affiliated to the interpretive paradigm, departing from the subjective aspects of consumption to understand the dynamic relationships between the consumers actions and the social and cultural meanings created. Methods of ethnographic inspiration – participant observation and in-depth interviews – were used to conduct this study. These methods permitted to be part of the leisure experience lived by the elderly as a means of understanding the meanings attributed to the experience. Fieldwork included two groups of elderly people. The first group is a musical encounter group called Seresta. Participant observation covered a six-month period; 15 elderly participants were interviewed in-depth, plus the founder and leader of the group. The second group included the elderly that participated in ballroom dancing classes. Again, participant observation lasted for six months and in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 participants. Fieldnotes and transcripts of the interviews together permitted to extract the meanings assigned by older people to these leisure activities. First, each activity was analyzed separately. For each group, meanings emerged from the analyses. Then a cross-group analysis was performed. The results showed that, despite meanings that are shared by the two leisure activities, each activity showed different meanings, or different nuances of the same meaning, and some of the meanings identified only appeared in one of the activities. These results suggest that there is a great variety of needs behind the leisure choices made by the elderly. In addition, the results indicate that leisure research focusing the elderly should take into account the heterogeneity of this group of consumers, therefore avoiding a reductionist approach that considers the elderly as a homogeneous group based on their physical limitations. As to managerial implications, the results of the study suggest that firms can segment the elderly consumers by the different meanings attributed to leisure, which can be equated to the benefits aimed when choosing their leisure activities.

This cross-sectional study explored the relationship between pet ownership, attachment, and psychological health among community-dwelling senior citizens and evaluated the impact of the placement of an aquarium into a regional senior center. General health, depression, social support, pet attitudes, pet attachment, pet relationships, and attitudes about the aquarium were assessed among 104 members of a senior center. Symptoms of depression were identified in 17.3% of the participants. Pets were a significant form of social support and attachment to pet owners. No significant relationship was observed between pet ownership, pet attachment, and psychological health. Positive health effects were reported among participants who observed the fish aquarium. While the relationship between pet ownership, human-animal interactions, and psychological well-being remains unclear, it appears that older adults can benefit from animal-assisted activities and therapy programs. Animal-assisted activities and therapy programs may be useful adjunctive therapies for depression in community-dwelling senior citizens.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law. This reform, it is argued, is projected to increase insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions, to expand access to insurance for more than 30 million Americans, and to increase estimated National medical spending while lowering projected Medicare spending. This thesis sought to investigate and analyze the perceptions of senior citizens in Central Florida about PPACA and their perceived effects on the healthcare quality provided to them under this law. Four sections of PPACA bill, thought to specifically pertain to the elderly, were selected for this study; respondents were asked their opinions regarding PPACA's aspects of: (1) the reform on preventive healthcare services; (2) Medicare Part D (prescription drugs); (3) Medicare; and (4) Medicaid. This thesis employed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies; data were collected and analyzed with findings presented and discussed.

Den konventionella maten har stor påverkan på miljön, vilket har medfört att allt fler konsumenter väljer ekologisk mat. Detta är ett noggrant undersökt fält. Kunskap saknas dock om pensionärer väljer ekologiska matvaror. Föreliggande studies syfte har varit att undersöka svenska pensionärers konsumtion av ekologiska matvaror, något som undersökts genom metodtriangulering av enkäter och semistrukturerade kvalitativa intervjuer. Resultatet tyder på att pensionärer konsumerar ekologisk mat av samma anledningar och hindras av samma orsaker som yngre konsumenter. Enda skillnaderna som uppvisats jämtemot yngre konsumenter är att pensionärers ekologiska konsumtion sker oberoende av könstillhörighet och familjestruktur. / Conventional food has a major environmental impact, which has caused more and more consumers to choose organic food. This is a thoroughly researched field. However, there is insufficient knowledge regarding whether senior citizens choose to buy organic food or not. The aim of the present study has been to examine the consumption of organic food among senior Swedish citizens. The study was conducted through surveys and semi-structured qualitative interviews. The results suggest that senior consumers have the same motives as younger consumers. They are also hindered by the same reasons as their younger counterparts. The only difference between the two groups is that senior citizen´s gender and family structure influence their organic food consumption less.

Yes / Human activity recognition from sensor data is a critical research topic to achieve remote health monitoring and ambient assisted living (AAL). In AAL, sensors are integrated into conventional objects aimed to support targets capabilities through digital environments that are sensitive, responsive and adaptive to human activities. Emerging technological paradigms to support AAL within the home or community setting offers people the prospect of a more individually focused care and improved quality of living. In the present work, an ambient human activity classification framework that augments information from the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) of passive RFID tags to obtain detailed activity profiling is proposed. Key indices of position, orientation, mobility, and degree of activities which are critical to guide reliable clinical management decisions using 4 volunteers are employed to simulate the research objective. A two-layer, fully connected sequence long short-term memory recurrent neural network model (LSTM RNN) is employed. The LSTM RNN model extracts the feature of RSS from the sensor data and classifies the sampled activities using SoftMax. The performance of the LSTM model is evaluated for different data size and the hyper-parameters of the RNN are adjusted to optimal states, which results in an accuracy of 98.18%. The proposed framework suits well for smart health and smart homes which offers pervasive sensing environment for the elderly, persons with disability and chronic illness.

Städer världen över växer konstant och Malmö är inget undantag. Urbaniseringen leder inte bara till bostadsbrist utan även brist på mark att bygga dessa nya bostäder på. Malmö stads gröna rekreationsmiljöer blir till följd av detta allt färre och mindre. Samtidigt förväntas antalet seniorer bosatta i Malmö stad öka noterbart under de kommande tio åren. En kombination av dessa faktorer kan leda till att seniorer i Malmö stad behöver färdas längre än vad de vill eller kan för att ta sig till närmsta gröna rekreationsmiljö. Det kan även leda till att de gröna rekreationsmiljöer som minskar till ytan förlorar en del av de attribut som är viktiga för seniorerna. Syftet med denna undersökning är därför att se hur seniorer i urbana Malmö upplever de befintliga gröna rekreationsmiljöer som finns i staden utifrån kvalitet och åtkomlighet. För att utföra studien användes semistrukturerade intervjuer med seniorer i urbana Malmö och landskapsarkitekter vid Malmö stad. Vid intervjuerna uppkom 4 teman som i arbetet presenteras i följande ordning: åtkomlighet, kvalitet, naturkontakt och trygghet. Resultaten visar att seniorer värdesätter närhet och god åtkomlighet till gröna rekreationsmiljöer samt god belysning och öppenhet för att skapa en känsla av trygghet. Faciliteter, som toaletter och sittplatser är viktiga för att trivas och en rik variation i naturmiljö är väsentlig för att skapa stimulerande och återhämtande miljöer för seniorer. / The world's cities are constantly growing and Malmö is no exception. Urbanization is leading not only to a shortage of housing but also a shortage of land on which to build these new homes. As a result, Malmö's green recreational environments are becoming fewer and smaller. At the same time, the number of senior citizens living in the city of Malmö is expected to increase significantly over the next ten years. A combination of these factors means that seniors in the city of Malmö may have to travel further than they want or can to get to the nearest green recreational space and it can also lead to the green recreational spaces that are reduced in size losing some of the attributes that were important to seniors. The purpose of this study is therefore to see how Malmö's seniors experience the existing green recreational environments that exist in the city based on quality and accessibility. To conduct this study, semi-structured interviews were carried out with senior citizens of the urban Malmö area as well as two landscape architects at Malmö stad. During the interviews 4 themes could be identified, and these are presented in the study as follows: accessibility, quality, nature connectedness and safety. The results of the study show that senior citizens value proximity and easy access to green recreational spaces. Good lighting systems and open spaces are also important but, in this case, to create a sense of security for seniors. Facilities such as toilets and benches are important for comfort and factors such as variety in the natural environment and vegetation are essential to create a stimulating and recuperative environment for seniors.