The purpose of this study was to understand, by means of Connell’s and Hirdman’s gender theories, whether the older persons’ gender as well as the family situation affect the assessments in elderly care. Previous studies show that social workers do not consciously take gender into consideration, while also showing that gender is important for the assessment and decision. Based on the purpose, we asked the questions how are the assessments of care managers affected by the gender of older persons and in what way are the assessments of care managers affected by older persons family situation? This study was based on eight interviews with care managers in eldery care. The result was divided into the following two main themes assistance management and the older person. Connell’s and Hirdman’s gender theories helped us answer our main questions and analyze our result. The result showed that the unaware subconscious ideas of male and female, older persons’ perceptions of male and female as well as the elderly’s division of different chores in the household are affecting the care managers’ needs assessments in such a way that men and women are granted and apply for different assistance. Depending on who needs help in a couple, if the older person lives alone or with someone as well as other families’ perceptions of what the husband and wife are capable of doing affects the needs assessments of care managers.

Doctor Legum - LLD / This thesis deals with a very important issue in South African society, i.e. the provision of financial and non-cash support to older persons. Older persons in South Africa can be described as a sizeable but vulnerable group requiring specific protection. Section 27 of the South African Constitution of 1996 obliges the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures within available resources to progressively realise the right of access to social security. Hence, the steps taken by the state to promote older persons’ right of access to social security and to protect their right to dignity need to be evaluated. The legislative framework for the provision of financial and non-cash support to older persons currently is fragmented into various statutes dealing with retirement income, state grants to older persons and care and support services for older persons. Therefore, the current legislation lacks an integrated approach to the provision of support and care to older persons, as well as a central principle on which to base future legislation concerning older persons. One such principle that could potentially be adopted is intergenerational solidarity, which can be described as the solidarity between the active working-age population, as one generation, from which benefits flow to older persons as the other. This thesis evaluates whether intergenerational solidarity should form the basis of South African legislation on the provision of retirement income and the provision of care and support to older persons, and if so, whether it in fact does. If the answer to the latter is in the negative, the thesis further examines whether the current process to reform the retirement income system and related legislation in South Africa would be a suitable platform to introduce the concept of intergenerational solidarity to legislation concerning older persons. / South Africa

In later life, the death of a family member occurs most often after a challenging time of family caring. It denotes a dramatic event in families’ lives, and involves intense feelings for all. To date, bereavement has mainly been investigated as an intrapersonal process from the perspective of family carers or widow/ers. Little is known about families’ experience when an adult member has died. A review of pertinent literature located only six adult family bereavement studies, which exposed the importance of family cohesion, communication and emotion, and found that family characteristics denote the background from which families make sense of the death. Despite these insights, a dearth of research exists about families’ lived relational world after a death late in life. Such knowledge is needed to better grasp bereaved families’ life-world and to discern their capacities and adversities, which shape their support needs. The purpose of this hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry was to disclose meaning patterns and practices of families living with the loss of a close other. It included ten bereaved community-dwelling families, represented by widow/ers (mean age 80y), adult children, in-laws and grandchildren (n=30). Family was defined as a situated, relational involvement by those who feel close, and living with loss was seen as a process of changing relationships. A combination of in-depth family group (n=21) and solo interviews (n=16) were held six to 23 months after the death, and field-notes were written. The thematic and narrative analysis, embedded in a hermeneutic movement, involved reading, reflecting, and writing about gleaned data, fore-understandings, and emerging insights. Findings revealed that families’ life with loss is a world shared, and a world apart. Families collectively looked back to weave the death into their family narrative, and in so doing, constructed a story of a good death, compared-contrasted it with other deaths and events, and situated it within their multi-generational family context. Families lived with their loss by sharing-not sharing interpretations and daily lives. They connected via remembering, talking, spend-ing time, and enacting presence, but they disconnected for a variety of reasons. Families moved forward by continuing or reconstructing their family being and doing. While some families faced upheaval, others continued with little change. These findings need to be seen as situated, temporal constructs of prolonged researcher-participant engagements. They yield insights into families’ world based on the accounts of ten traditional families. Even so, this study adds a much needed empirical family perspective on bereavement. Family relations arose as interplay of different, contradicting forces at play, which moved members together and apart in their daily lives with loss. As such, it supports family models that emphasize the multivocal, relational, contextual, and continuously shifting nature of family health. It revealed that families hold an inherent capacity to make meaning of the death and enact family thereafter, and understand their relationships as resource. Thus, families may not need professional therapeutic interventions to redress their “functioning” or to avert “adverse” outcomes, but health promoting and relationship-strengthening care and services. Nurses can be helpful to families by facilitating meaning-making, strengthening family relations in a way that values multiple voices at play, and by supporting family transition and caring in light of present concerns.

M.A. / New legislation regarding older persons in South Africa came into effect on 1 April 2010. Two areas of service delivery in this field were given special attention in the development of the current legislation. Protection for older persons is covered more extensively, with much better provisions having been made for professionals to deal promptly and effectively with the abuse of an older person. The prosecution of any person, who abuses an older person, is also provided for in the current legislation. Community-based care and support services for older persons represent a completely new area of local legislation. The current legislation provides for the creation of a supportive environment, within which a spectrum of well established and well managed services should enable older persons to exercise choice with regards to care options. The spirit of the current legislation fosters the possibility that older persons may receive maximum care, should such need arise, within their own homes. Community-based services for older persons must therefore be registered, and meet the standards set by the legislation, as expressed in Part 1 of the National Norms and Standards. Locally practicing social workers are thus tasked with new implementation and monitoring obligations, which are rather daunting. The goal of this study was to conceptualise, design and assemble a draft of guidelines that may assist social workers in daily implementation tasks, brought about by the new focus areas within the current legislation regarding older persons. A qualitative research approach was followed. The methodology was guided, in part, by the Analysis and Design phases from within the classic Design and Development model (Thomas, 1984) of developmental research. The analysis phase of the study included a document study and a thematic content analysis of the primary data. Themes and sub-themes of the legislative requirements, pertinent to the implementation by social workers, were identified, extracted and transformed by enhancements and explanations drawn from the literature and professional practice experience. Trustworthiness was obtained by constant checking against the primary data and a review by an expert and knowledgeable peers. The end result, the draft guidelines document, is a body of synthesised information that should be accessible and useful to social workers in daily implementation and monitoring practice.

Orientador: Anita Liberalesso Neri / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Educação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-07T22:38:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lopes_Andrea_D.pdf: 1085991 bytes, checksum: 1aa9d76f96791a79d287fc3de9cd74f4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006 / Resumo: Objetivo: analisar significados, motivações, benefícios percebidos, bem-estar subjetivo, ajustamento psicológico e atitudes em relação à comunidade' entre idosos brasileiros e americanos que realizam trabalho voluntário. Participantes: 54 brasileiros e 49 americanos com mais de 60 anos, principalmente mulheres. Instrumentos e técnicas: questionários e escalas levantando informações sociodemográficas, natureza do vínculo institucional, modos de vida, motivações, significados, benefícios percebidos, bem-estar subjetivo, ajustamento psicológico e atitudes em relação à comunidade; entrevistas semi-estruturadas; observação participante. Análise de dados: análise de conteúdo, estatística descritiva e análise etnográfica. Resultados: Forte similaridade entre os dois grupos, embora os americanos tenham vínculo mais forte com o trabalho voluntário. Todos valorizaram a solidariedade, a oportunidade para a auto-desenvolvimento e a geratividade propiciadas pelo trabalho voluntário; os americanos enfatizaram mais os ganhos em geratividade e os brasileiros a auto-aceitação e o crescimento pessoal. A satisfação e os afetos positivos foram elevados nas duas amostras; o significado do termo voluntário associa-se a valor social. Houve diferenças entre as motivações iniciais, voltadas ao outro, e as motivações permanência, voltadas ao self ; satisfação com o voluntariado associou-se a treinamento e supervisão; identificaram-se relações de interdependência no ambiente institucional. Conclusão: a atividade voluntária formal entre idosos estimula o processo de socialização e o auto-conhecimento / Abstract: Objective: to assess meanings, motivations, perceived benefits, subjective well-being, and psychological adjustment and attitudes toward community among Brazilian and American seniors that do volunteer work. Participants: 54 Brazilian and 49 American people older than 60 years of age, especially women. Instruments and techniques: questionnaires and scales gathering the following data: sociodemographic, nature of the institutional link, ways of life, motivations, meanings, perceived benefits, subjective well-being, psychological adjustment, and attitudes regarding community; semi-structured interviews; participant observation. Data analysis: content analysis, descriptive statistics, ethnographic analysis. Results: strong similarity between the two groups, although Americans have a strongest link with volunteer work. Everyone valued solidarity, opportunity for self-development and gerativity brought by the volunteer work; Americans emphasized gains in generativity and Brazilians, self-acceptation and personal growth. Satisfaction and positive affects were high in both samples. There were differences between the initial motivations, focused on other people, and the permanent motivations, focused on the self; satisfactions with volunteer work were associated to training and supervision; interdependent relationships in the institutional environment were identified. Conclusion: formal volunteer work among seniors stimulates processes of socialization and self-knowledge / Doutorado

Sömn är livsviktigt för att bibehålla hälsa och livskvalitet och innebär en period av återuppbyggnad samt återhämtning. Sömnens struktur förändras med stigande ålder, med en ökad fragmentering och mindre djupsömn. Äldre personer på särskilt boende (SÄBO) upplever en rad sömnstörningar med dagtrötthet och håglöshet som följd. Dessa sömnstörningar lindras i nuläget främst med sömninducerande- och lugnande läkemedel vilket leder till biverkningar och i förlängningen ytterligare sömnstörningar och försämrad livskvalitet. Äldre personer på SÄBO, vilka ofta lider av multisjuklighet och funktionsnedsättningar, har omfattande omvårdnadsbehov vilket kräver att sjuksköterskan har olika icke-farmakologiska åtgärder att tillgå för att främja sömnen hos dessa personer. / Sleep is essential to maintain health and quality of life, and involves a period of recovery. The architecture of sleep evolves with age, with increased fragmentation and less deep sleep as a result. Older persons living in residential facilities experience a range of sleep disorders, which results in daytime sleepiness and dysfunction. These sleep disorders are primarily treated with sleep inducing and sedative drugs, which results in side effects and may lead to further sleep disorders and a deterioration of quality of life. Older persons at SÄBO, who often suffer from comorbidities and disabilities, have extensive care needs, which require the registered nurse to have access to a range of non-pharmacological interventions to utilise, in order to promote sleep in these persons.

A human thermoregulation model has been adapted for predicting the thermal response of Typical Older Persons. The model known as the Older Persons Model predicts the core body temperature and regulatory responses of the older people in environmental exposures of cold, warm and hot. The model was developed by modifying an existing dynamic human thermoregulation model using anthropometric and thermo-physical properties of older people. The Model defines the body as two interrelating systems of the body structure (passive system) and the control system of the central nervous system (active system). The Older person's passive system of the model was developed by meticulously extracting relevant experimental data from selected published research works relating to anthropometric and thermo-physical properties of older people. The resultant body structure (passive system) is a multi-segmented representation of a Typical Older Person. The active system (central nervous system) was developed by the application of a novel optimization method based on the working principles of Genetic Algorithms. The use of Genetic Algorithm enables the complex characteristics of the central nervous system of the older persons to be well represented and evaluated based on available data. Active system control signal coefficients for sweating, shivering, vasodilation and vasoconstriction were explicitly derived based on experimental data sourced from literature. The Older Persons Model has been validated using independent experimental data and its results show good agreement with measured data. Furthermore, the Older Persons Model has been applied to several test cases extracted from published literature and its results show good agreement with published findings on the thermal behaviour of older persons. An interview study conducted as part of this research revealed that, professionals (built environment specialists) found the Older Persons Model useful in assisting to further understand the thermal response of the older persons. In conclusion, the adaptation of an existing human thermoregulation model has resulted in a new model, which allows improved prediction of heat and cold strain of the older person although there exist limitations.

This thesis heeds W. Andrew Achenbaum’s call for historians of ageing to analyse the inner lives of their subjects. Building on and problematizing existing studies of health and welfare policies for the old, it explores the ways that mid-century public and private life shaped how individuals felt about old age. Both public discussions and private narratives of ageing are used to consider how older people understood and expressed their emotional experiences during a challenging period of the life cycle. I argue that old age in general, and its emotional dimensions in particular, are missing from British historiography. Yet both were vital to social life in the mid-century, when the ageing population was an important political issue and a large number of experts hoped to manage the emotional and psychological aspects of this ‘problem’. This thesis begins by setting out this national context for old age, showing that heightened interest in ageing and emotion were significant influences over the expansion of the welfare state. However, contrary to the expectations of mid-century researchers and policy-makers, my subsequent chapters show that older people frequently maintained their social roles and relationships through informal means. This thesis explores how ageing men and women engaged with work, retirement, ill health, marriage, bereavement, fashion, beauty culture, and autobiography as opportunities to find meaning in late life. Together, these varied perspectives on old age make a series of interventions in its history. I argue that historians could do much more to detail the significance of the life cycle for their subjects, whether they write political, social, or cultural history. As this thesis shows, such studies should approach ageing as a lifelong and personal process, which has been shaped by reminiscence and story-telling. I suggest that historians of emotion are best-equipped to write scholarship that is sensitive to the passing of time and personal biography in this way.

This thesis examines how patterns of time use change in later life and how the way in which older people use their time is related to well-being. Arguing that maintaining balance in time use concerns not only people of working age but matters for people of all ages, we propose an alternative theoretical framework of life balance. This consists of two conceptual models: The Life Balance Triangle and Multidimensional Life Balance (MLB). Using UK time use data, the thesis demonstrates the empirical applicability of these two models in enhancing our understanding of older people's daily lives. The life balance model, which we built by modifying the theoretical categorisation of time use by Ås (1978) and the work-leisure triangle of Gershuny (2003), identifies and presents alteration in time use across the life course as changes in balance between constraints (committed time) and freedom of choice (discretionary time), controlling for time spent on biological/physiological maintenance (regenerative time). We find the balance shifts towards greater discretionary, and less committed, time in later life, with a significant gender gap. Life stage, which reflects social structure and expectations, rather than biological ageing, was found to be the most influential factor for life balance dynamics. Findings suggest that men may find it more difficult to adjust to life beyond work because of abrupt and greater changes in life balance, which may disrupt their daily time structure. The multidimensional life balance model challenges the assumption of a linear relationship between the level of activity and well-being of older people. Adapting the Alkire-Foster method (Alkire and Foster, 2011), we propose a threshold-based approach that takes the heterogeneity of older people and multidimensionality of daily life into account, and emphasises overall balance in the level of activities across various activity domains. Results show MLB is associated positively with better self-assessed health, suggesting a threshold effect. We also identify the demographic/socio-economic groups more likely to lack MLB, as well as domains in which most people are deficient. The thesis contributes to work-life balance research by moving beyond paid-work centrality, and to ageing research by providing a multidimensional approach to activities and well-being in later life.

The purpose of this study was to inquire how social workers perceive and describe financial abuse of older persons. Six qualitative interviews were carried out and the assembled data was then categorized and analyzed using a theory considering exercise of power and ageism as a theoretical frame. Previous research has shown that at least 10% of older persons have been exposed to some form of abuse or violence; however, there is a lack of research carried out in a Swedish context regarding financial abuse specifically. The six persons interviewed in this study all presented financial abuse as some kind of violence and as previous research has shown the study suggests that this is an increasing problem. Further research ought to be carried out to increase the awareness of this particular form of abuse and to facilitate discovery and development of measures to prevent financial abuse of older persons. The result of this study as well as previous research indicates that there is a high amount of unrecorded cases; therefore, it is hard to define financial abuse since the use of the term varies among different contexts and that the term consists of very differing examples.