Contemporary Perspectives on Ageism

Contemporary Perspectives on Ageism
Author: Liat Ayalon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2018-05-22
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 3319738208

This open access book provides a comprehensive perspective on the concept of ageism, its origins, the manifestation and consequences of ageism, as well as ways to respond to and research ageism. The book represents a collaborative effort of researchers from over 20 countries and a variety of disciplines, including, psychology, sociology, gerontology, geriatrics, pharmacology, law, geography, design, engineering, policy and media studies. The contributors have collaborated to produce a truly stimulating and educating book on ageism which brings a clear overview of the state of the art in the field. The book serves as a catalyst to generate research, policy and public interest in the field of ageism and to reconstruct the image of old age and will be of interest to researchers and students in gerontology and geriatrics.

Long-Term Care in an Aging Society

Long-Term Care in an Aging Society
Author: Graham D. Rowles
Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2015-08-13
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0826194567

This is a comprehensive graduate textbook focusing on the full spectrum of long-term care settings ranging from family and community-based care through supportive housing options to a variety of institutional long-term care alternatives. Integrating theory and practice, the book features the perspectives of diverse fields regarding current long-term care options and new directions for the future. Prominent scholars from history, environmental design, family caregiving, social service delivery, clinical care, health service delivery, public policy, finance, law, and ethics explore such themes as: Relationships among independence, dependence, and interdependence Ethical considerations woven into the provision of long-term care Decision-making in long-term care Fluidity in long-term care The lived experience of long-term care A micro-macro perspective ranging from the individual to societal institutions The book examines future directions for long-term care, considering such factors as the interface of technology and long-term care, cultural diversity, and relationships between voluntary and paid services. Each chapter includes case examples, study questions, and exercises, additional resources, and website links. An extensive glossary of terms is also provided, as well as instructor’s resources are also available. Key Features: Focuses on the full array of long-term care options Integrates theory and practice Incorporates the perspectives of diverse fields including history, environmental design, family caregiving, social services, public policy, etc. Includes numerous case examples, study questions, exercises, and additional resources Considers new approaches to long-term care, incorporating technology and considering cultural diversity and voluntary vs. paid services About the Authors: Graham D. Rowles, PhD, is Founding Director of the Graduate Center for Gerontology and Chair of the Department of Gerontology, University of Kentucky. He is also Professor of Gerontology with joint appointments in Nursing, Behavioral Science, Geography and Health Behavior. An environmental gerontologist, his research focuses on the lived experience of aging. A central theme of this work is exploration, employing qualitative methodologies of the changing relationship between older adults and their environments with advancing age, and the implications of this relationship for health, wellbeing and environmental design. He has conducted in-depth ethnographic research with elderly populations in urban (inner city), rural (Appalachian), and nursing facility environments. Recent research includes leadership of the Kentucky Elder Readiness Initiative (KERI), a statewide project to explore the implications for communities of the aging of the Baby Boom cohort. His publications include Prisoners of Space? and six co-edited volumes, in addition to more than 60 book chapters and articles. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Gerontology and Journal of Housing for the Elderly. Dr. Rowles is Past National President of Sigma Phi Omega, Past President of the Southern Gerontological Society, Past President of the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, and is currently Chair of the Commonwealth of Kentucky Institute on Aging. Pamela B. Teaster, PhD, is Associate Director for Research, Center for Gerontology, and Professor, Department of Human Development, Virginia Tech University. She established the Kentucky Justice Center for Elders and Vulnerable Adults and is the first President of the Kentucky Guardianship Association. Dr. Teaster is Secretary General of the International Network for the Prevention of Elder Abuse. She served as Director and Chairperson of the Graduate Center for Gerontology/Department of Gerontology as well as the Director of Doctoral Studies and Associate Dean for Research for College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Teaster serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Elder Abuse and Neglect. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education, a recipient of the Rosalie Wolf Award for Research on Elder Abuse, the Outstanding Affiliate Member Award (Kentucky Guardianship Association), and the Distinguished Educator Award (Kentucky Association for Gerontology). She has received funding from The Retirement Research Foundation, Administration on Aging, National Institute on Aging, Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children, National Institute of Justice, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Office of Victims of Crime. She is the author of over 100 peer-reviewed articles, reports, books, and book chapters.

Social Exclusion in Later Life

Social Exclusion in Later Life
Author: Kieran Walsh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030514064

Drawing on interdisciplinary, cross-national perspectives, this open access book contributes to the development of a coherent scientific discourse on social exclusion of older people. The book considers five domains of exclusion (services; economic; social relations; civic and socio-cultural; and community and spatial domains), with three chapters dedicated to analysing different dimensions of each exclusion domain. The book also examines the interrelationships between different forms of exclusion, and how outcomes and processes of different kinds of exclusion can be related to one another. In doing so, major cross-cutting themes, such as rights and identity, inclusive service infrastructures, and displacement of marginalised older adult groups, are considered. Finally, in a series of chapters written by international policy stakeholders and policy researchers, the book analyses key policies relevant to social exclusion and older people, including debates linked to sustainable development, EU policy and social rights, welfare and pensions systems, and planning and development. The book’s approach helps to illuminate the comprehensive multidimensionality of social exclusion, and provides insight into the relative nature of disadvantage in later life. With 77 contributors working across 28 nations, the book presents a forward-looking research agenda for social exclusion amongst older people, and will be an important resource for students, researchers and policy stakeholders working on ageing.

Long-Term Care for Frail Older People

Long-Term Care for Frail Older People
Author: John C. Campbell
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 4431685030

The aging of society is a growing concern in all advanced nations, and at the forefront of concern is long-term care for frail older people. Enactment of a new public long-term care insurance program by the Japanese government in 1997 provided an excellent opportunity for a conference focusing on an ideal long-term care system for frail older people. The conference was organized around four major themes: Social aspects, including family dynamics and the role of formal providers; Clinical aspects, including effective treatments for physical and mental disabilities; Macroeconomic and macropolitical settings for public policy; Program design and management issues. With contributions from the fields of medicine, nursing, social work, gerontology, political science, economics, and sociology, this volume provides an overview of key problems and possible solutions in programs for frail older people from a unique international perspective.

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults

Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2020-05-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309671035

Social isolation and loneliness are serious yet underappreciated public health risks that affect a significant portion of the older adult population. Approximately one-quarter of community-dwelling Americans aged 65 and older are considered to be socially isolated, and a significant proportion of adults in the United States report feeling lonely. People who are 50 years of age or older are more likely to experience many of the risk factors that can cause or exacerbate social isolation or loneliness, such as living alone, the loss of family or friends, chronic illness, and sensory impairments. Over a life course, social isolation and loneliness may be episodic or chronic, depending upon an individual's circumstances and perceptions. A substantial body of evidence demonstrates that social isolation presents a major risk for premature mortality, comparable to other risk factors such as high blood pressure, smoking, or obesity. As older adults are particularly high-volume and high-frequency users of the health care system, there is an opportunity for health care professionals to identify, prevent, and mitigate the adverse health impacts of social isolation and loneliness in older adults. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults summarizes the evidence base and explores how social isolation and loneliness affect health and quality of life in adults aged 50 and older, particularly among low income, underserved, and vulnerable populations. This report makes recommendations specifically for clinical settings of health care to identify those who suffer the resultant negative health impacts of social isolation and loneliness and target interventions to improve their social conditions. Social Isolation and Loneliness in Older Adults considers clinical tools and methodologies, better education and training for the health care workforce, and dissemination and implementation that will be important for translating research into practice, especially as the evidence base for effective interventions continues to flourish.

Long-Term Care in the 21st Century

Long-Term Care in the 21st Century
Author: Iris Chi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013-08-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1134735510

Who pays for long-term care? Discover the unique approaches of seven countries around the Pacific Rim! Long-Term Care in the Twenty-First Century discusses policies and programs for long-term care in seven countries around the Asia-Pacific Rim: the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Each country is covered in two chapters, one to examine the philosophy and values that underlie its approaches to long-term care, the second to discuss its systems of service delivery. These thoughtful analyses, backed up with facts and figures, explain program successes and failures in the context of demographic and social trends and with reference to the differing political systems across the region. Its breadth of perspective and insightful examination of cultural differences make Long-Term Care in the Twenty-First Century an important contribution to the international comparative study of aging. The programs in the United States, Australia, and Canada offer a fascinating contrast with the longer-established and very different programs in the Asian countries, including Japan, the world’s oldest country. Long-Term Care in the Twenty-First Century provides practical information on essential gerontological issues for each country, including: financing arrangements development of client classification systems case management in both residential and community-based systems key source documents, references, and Web sites political and cultural influences home-based and family caregiving This valuable book provides a critical record of developments in the current transition period. This multicultural perspective contributes a chance for all countries to learn from the experience of others in dealing with a problem that is increasingly important as the world population ages. Long-Term Care in the Twenty-First Century is an essential resource for scholars, service providers, policymakers, and anyone concerned with care of the aged, not only in Pacific Rim countries but around the world.

Global Perspectives on Financing Long-Term Care

Global Perspectives on Financing Long-Term Care
Author: Kim Dayton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre:
ISBN:

The vast majority of the world's nations will experience a dramatic change in the structure of their "population pyramids" over the next forty years. Longer life expectancies and decreasing birth rates in all but a handful of countries will result in an enormous increase in the number and percentage of elderly persons relative to the non-elderly population, with elderly populations tripling or quadrupling between 2000 and 2050 in many nations. In less than twenty-five years, some 1.5 billion of the world's 8 billion persons will be 65 older, compared to fewer than 500 million today. The number of persons 80 and over will increase by more than 500% during that period. Sixty-two percent of these "oldest old" will be women. As the world's population ages, and its old get even older, industrialized and developing nations alike must re-evaluate social, economic, and cultural institutions that historically have had little need to account for particularly large elderly populations. Global aging has the potential to generate a crisis with regard to the financing of long term care for elderly individuals who are disabled or significantly compromised by disease or frailty. Although most elderly persons do not need long term care at the level typically provided in a skilled nursing home or similar residential institutions, as a group they suffer disproportionately from conditions and diseases that mean they will need assistance to live independently. Some will become debilitated enough that they must in institutional facilities such as "aged care" or "nursing" homes that can provided intense, around-the-clock assistance and medical care. Until recently, very few nations have been confronted with significantly large enough populations of elderly persons in need of long term care to perceive long term care financing as a matter imperative - a lack of immediacy has kept the issue under the radar of laypersons and politicians alike. But as the number and percentage of elderly has crept upward in both the industrialized and developing world, the need to address deficiencies in the way in which long term care is financed and delivered has become paramount. Long term care is a product that, until very recently, has not been bought or sold. Family caregiving of the elderly is the norm in virtually all of the developing and developed world, and in nations where it is not existing resources have until recently been largely adequate to serve the relatively small elderly population. It is only in the last fifteen years or so that the demographic "sea change" described above has begun to threaten public resources and private lives so significantly as to merit closer scrutiny of the inability of social welfare and insurance systems to support long term care for the elderly under current funding schemes. This paper describes how three particular nations - Japan, the United States, and Italy - currently deliver and pay for the principal components of "long term care" for those elderly who may need it, and suggests how these mechanisms may or may not offer solutions to the world's future need to provide quality of life to all its citizens, including the oldest of them. It proposes what should be regarded as the minimum components of an economically sustainable, gender-neutral, and inter-generationally just system of providing long term care to the disabled elderly.

Towards Human Rights in Residential Care for Older Persons

Towards Human Rights in Residential Care for Older Persons
Author: Helen Meenan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2015-07-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1317910737

People are leading significantly longer lives than previous generations did, and the proportion of older people in the population is growing. Residential care for older people will become increasingly necessary as our society ages and, we will require more of it. At this moment in time, the rights of older people receive attention at international and regional levels, with the United Nations, the Organization of American States and the African Union exploring the possibility of establishing new conventions for the rights of older persons. This book explores the rights of older people and their quality of care once they are living in a care home, and considers how we can commence the journey towards a human rights framework to ensure decent and dignified care for older people. The book takes a comparative approach to present and future challenges facing the care home sector for older people in Africa (Kenya), the Arab world (Egypt), Australia, China, England, Israel, Japan and the USA. An international panel of experts have contributed chapters, identifying how their particular society cares for its older and oldest people, the extent to which demographic and economic change has placed their system under pressure and the role that residential elder care homes play in their culture. The book also explores the extent to which constitutional or other rights form a foundation to the regulatory and legislative structures to residential elder care and it examines the important concept of dignity. As a multi-regional study of the care of older person from a human rights perspective, this book will be of excellent use and interest, in particular to students and researchers of family and welfare law, long-term care, social policy, social work, human rights and elder law.

Long-Term Care for the Elderly

Long-Term Care for the Elderly
Author: Betty H. Landsberger
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2024-05-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1040007988

In the 1980s the need for long-term care for elderly people in Western societies was quite obvious from the increasing numbers of old and very old people in the population. Countries had responded in a number of different ways to cope with this need. Originally published in 1985, the central theme of this book is to explore these different ways and to probe beneath the surface level of institutions and specific programs. Beneath this level are a number of layers of care, consisting of attitudes, beliefs and values on a social as well as personal level. Thus, chapters two to six explore the surface level of services, goods, treatments, institutions, etc. provided in different countries for long-term care. Chapter seven looks at another layer, the role of government, chapter eight at ethical issues of human rights and chapter nine at the base layer, the views of elderly people themselves. The book draws mainly on information from the UK, USA, Germany and Scandinavia and will be of interest to all concerned with the health and social welfare of the elderly.