A death in research exacerbates the lack of knowledge and information in respect of the needs and life view of the aged. Two studies were conducted in this population group with specific reference to the 'once-off interview'. Information was gathered using interview schedules focusing on therapeutic skills of social workers working within the system which cares for the aged. Results of a pilot study and an expanded study were compared in order to establish the inter-relationship between the. needs of the elderly, their elemental experiences in line with Bloom's theory (1984), and the role of the social worker. Findings revealed that the majority of "discontinuances" after the first interview were because the needs of the elderly clients had in fact been met. The need for day care services, transport and the expansion of the 'home help' facility was highlighted to enable the elderly to retain their independence in the community / Social Science / M.A. (Social Science: Mental Health)

Over the next decade the ‘Baby Boomer' cohort will increasingly contribute to the proportion of those aged 60 and over in Britain. The issue of how the mobility of older people has changed for different cohort groups has not been considered in a historical context. Ryder (1965) argued that cohort groups could be important in determining behaviour as have other social structural factors, such as socioeconomic status. This thesis merges the disciplines of transport geography and population studies using a novel approach of cohort analysis, which has not been used widely for studying mobility trends. Using National Travel Survey data from 1995-2008, the mobility trends of older people in Britain are explored by creating pseudo cohorts. Pseudo cohorts are artificially created datasets which are constructed from using repeated cross-sectional data (McIntosh, 2005, Uren, 2006). This technique can differentiate ‘age', ‘period' and ‘cohort' effects in mobility trends. Age effects are differences in behaviour between age groups i.e. changes in mobility associated with age itself. Period effects relate to changes in behaviour in all age groups over a period of time. Cohort effects are those associated with behaviour common to particular groups born around the same time (Glenn, 2005, Yang, 2007). The influence of the Scottish concessionary travel policy on the mobility of older people at the aggregate level is also considered using Scottish Household Survey data from 1999-2008. This policy is very blunt and based on assumptions about older age. As cohorts differ, these assumptions may no longer hold and therefore the policy may not be effective. This thesis argues, using a longitudinal demographic perspective, that structural effects shape mobility of cohorts differently over time. The findings reveal although mobility amongst older people is rising in general, there would actually be declining mobility were it not for the Boomer cohort. Amongst younger cohorts mobility is lower. The analysis also shows that women travel further than men, a fundamental break with the past, specific to this generation. This thesis illustrates the importance of cohort membership in explaining mobility change.

Case management, a coordinating process designed to align service provision more closely to the identified needs of people requiring assistance in the context of complex care systems, is an example of those policies and practices that cross the borders of different national welfare systems, ostensibly to resolve the same or similar problems in the adopting country. Developed in the USA, case management was re-named 'care management' upon adoption in the UK as part of the community care reforms of the early 1990s, reforms which have framed my professional life in English local authority adult social care services ever since. In 2007, a temporary research fellowship (TH Marshall Fellowship, London School of Economics) enabled me to spend four months in Berlin studying a citywide case management service for older people in the context of German long-term care policy and legislation. This experience sits at the core of this thesis which addresses the extent to which the study of a specific case management service for older people in Berlin can illuminate how case management translates across differing national welfare contexts, taking into account the particular methodological challenges of cross-national research. Drawing on both cross-national social policy and translation studies literatures and adopting a multi-method case study approach, the central problems of determining similarity and difference, equivalence and translation form the core of the thesis. Informed by a realist understanding of the social world, the study took a naturalistic turn in situ that fore-grounded the more ethnographic elements in the mix of documentary research, semi-participant observation and meetings with key informants that formed my data sources and were recorded in extensive field notes. The data were analysed to trace how case management was constructed locally in relation to both state and federal level policy and legislation, and then comparatively re-examined in the context of the key methodological problems identified above in relation to understandings of care management in England as reported in the literature, in order to further explore the question of comparability of case management across different welfare contexts. The research clearly demonstrates how institutional context both shaped and constrained the adoption of case management in Berlin, and highlights a need in comparative research for close contextual examination of the apparently similar, with a focus on functionally equivalent mechanisms, to determine the extent to which case management can be said to be similar or different in different contexts, particularly where English words and expressions are directly absorbed into the local language. Relating the case study to findings from earlier studies of care management in England highlights the extent to which care management in England is itself a locally shaped and contextualised variant of case management as developed in the USA that matches poorly to the variant in Berlin. Indeed problems discovered in the research site constructing definitional boundaries for case management in practice mirror issues in the wider literature and raise questions about the specificity of the original concept itself. Nonetheless, the study shows that, despite the multiple asymmetries of equivalence and difficulties of translation, there are sufficient points of similarity for cautious potential lessons to be drawn from Berlin, particularly with regards to policy changes on the horizon in England, but also in the other direction with regards to how case management in Berlin may also be re-shaped following recent reforms to German long-term care legislation.

A death in research exacerbates the lack of knowledge and information in respect of the needs and life view of the aged. Two studies were conducted in this population group with specific reference to the 'once-off interview'. Information was gathered using interview schedules focusing on therapeutic skills of social workers working within the system which cares for the aged. Results of a pilot study and an expanded study were compared in order to establish the inter-relationship between the. needs of the elderly, their elemental experiences in line with Bloom's theory (1984), and the role of the social worker. Findings revealed that the majority of "discontinuances" after the first interview were because the needs of the elderly clients had in fact been met. The need for day care services, transport and the expansion of the 'home help' facility was highlighted to enable the elderly to retain their independence in the community / Social Science / M.A. (Social Science: Mental Health)

Cette thèse a pour objet les habitats alternatifs aux dispositifs gérontologiques institués pour personnes âgées « fragiles » et « dépendantes ». Ces formules résidentielles s’inscrivent dans le prolongement d’un mouvement à contre-courant amorcé en France dès la fin des années 1970. Dans une comparaison critique avec les infrastructures existantes, structurées autour des deux pôles du maintien à domicile et de l’hébergement institutionnel, il s’agit pour les porteurs de projets de réinventer les lieux du vieillir et d’imaginer de nouveaux modèles d’accueil et d’accompagnement viables, si possible, « jusqu’à la mort ». Nous appréhendons ces réalisations novatrices comme des laboratoires d’expérimentation. Les habitats alternatifs amorcent une ouverture du champ des possibles. Cette ouverture suppose de faire un « pas de côté » pour repenser ou se substituer à l’institué et répondre aux besoins jugés insatisfaits ou mal satisfaits des populations vieillissantes « fragiles » et « dépendantes ». Cette recherche s’appuie sur des enquêtes empiriques menées dans plusieurs formules alternatives et sur un corpus de 49 entretiens directifs approfondis avec les différents acteurs qui évoluent dans les lieux (initiateurs, équipes de coordination et de médiation, aidants professionnels, familiaux et familiers, usagers). / This research studies alternative housings for the elderly with frailty and dependence. These new habitats forms have been built in France since the end of the 1970th in order to deal with the shortcomings of the gerontological facilities: the traditional nursing homes, which are highly criticized, and the home-care support. The projects leaders aim to reinvent the place to grow old and to create new welcome and support facilities for the elderly until the end of life. We define these innovated habitats as experimental laboratory which aim to respond, in a different way, the unmet need of the elderly with frailty and dependence.This PhD is based on empirical research conducted in several alternative housings and 49 semi-structured interviews with actors operating in these (projects leaders, coordination and mediation teams, professional families and friend’s caregivers, users). From a comparative and a comprehensive approach, we can address convergence and divergence of the alternative housing, understand the social experiment path, return the logic and the dynamics of reception and support methodologies, evaluate stress points between the modelled field with the initiators and the field with experienced by users, but we can also question the scope and meaning of the gerontological alternative in a broader perspective. Indeed, alterative housings are initiated in a context promoting values like autonomy and self- realization which may be seen as new normative injunctions.