An outstanding examination of the cross-cultural apsects in social work practice and service dealing with Hispanic elderly, in particular Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and Mexicans. It provides a historical as well as a sociodemographic overview of the Hispanic aged, and addresses economic, cultural, and health issues affecting their quality of life. This is certainly a notable and comprehensive study of service utilization, variations in aging, politics and public policy, and foremost a collection of research writings of ethnography of Hispanic aging patterns and variabilities. Most highly recommended for public and academic libraries and for class use. LA Red/The Net A notable contribution to the literature dealing with ethnic variations in aging, this volume of interrelated original essays looks at how Hispanic elderly living in the United States are adapting to the present, maintaining links to the past, and determining the roles they may have in shaping the future. Addressing economic, social, cultural, and health issues that affect the quality of life of older Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other Hispanics, the book offers both comprehensive analyses of selected topics and descriptive case studies of community life together with theoretical paradigms and practice models in the field of minority aging.

This book explores various practices and policies related to ageing issues in India. It addresses ageing concerns from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint with in-depth analyses of existential dimensions of ageing. It provides deep insights into ageing in India by discussing demographics related to health and social differentials, gender concerns, retirement problems, epidemiological transition taking place in the country with rising problem of dementia and mental health problems. It consists of 23 chapters written by various established as well as upcoming scholars in the field. The authors cover a broad range of topics with regard to provisions for institutional care, geriatric practice and emerging issues of elder abuse. The book will appeal to professionals and to lay people getting interested in ageing India from a social, health, gender, economic, psychological and emotional aspects.

The growing number of elder men providing hands-on care to loved ones, particularly spouses, undeniably represents a hidden segment of the home care population. With that in consideration, caregiving in communities of color, in particular, is increasing while numbers of informal (unpaid) caregivers are projected to triple by 2030. Despite statistics, studies on African-American men who care for other elders (such as spouses and parents) - indeed, "the hidden among the hidden" - are negligible. This text follows a study conducted by Helen Black, a research scientist focusing on aging, alongside John Groce and Charles Harmon, founders of Mature Africans Learning from Each Other (M.A.L.E.), in which they interviewed elderly African-American men in caregiver roles. As a whole, The Hidden Among the Hidden is unique in its study of caregiving in the areas of subject matter, methodology, and presentation of findings. The men whose attitudes and behaviors toward caregiving are recorded in this book share a wealth of knowledge for other caregivers, gerontologists, healthcare professionals, students, and the community in general.

In a powerful blending of memoir and practical strategies from a medical doctor's perspective, The Gift of Caring: Saving Our Parents - and ourselves - from the Perils of Modern Healthcare reveals the hidden side of modern healthcare practices for aging Americans. This ground-breaking book, co-written by award-winning author Marcy Houle and nationally-recognized geriatrician and public health advocate, Elizabeth Eckstrom MD MPH, sheds new light on aging by showing it from twin perspectives: the story of a daughter desperately seeking help for the parents she loves, and a geriatrician who offers life-changing strategies that can protect our loved ones and ourselves. Today, for many older adults, the medical delivery system is confusing, fragmented, and ill-equipped to provide comprehensive, person-centered care. Under our current healthcare model, thousands of aging persons face unnecessary suffering, hospitalizations and nursing home stays, and even preventable death. Seniors and families often feel powerless as they travel this sad journey. Not having knowledge of aging's changes, they resign themselves to believing there is nothing anyone can do to help, while some health care professionals simply write off symptoms seniors endure as "just old age." But as Marcy Houle discovered in caring for her parents, many of the problems often are not "just old age." Further, the real issue is not that the answers to ease suffering don't exist. Rather, what we need to know is generally not available to the general public. Even more concerning, many health care professionals have had little or no training in the care of older adults. The Gift of Caring hopes to change that. It is written to give empowerment to all older adults, family members, and health care professionals, by sharing much needed knowledge and practical strategies. The Gift of Caring shows the best ways to advocate for our parent's health care ... and our own ... by giving us the tools we need to insist upon the better way. Your parents and you deserve the best healthcare as you age- But there are so many reasons why that's not happening.You can change that.

Family members are increasingly likely to provide caregiving for older adults as the US population ages. This book summarizes what we know about caregiving by spouses and other intimate partners, adult children, siblings, grandchildren, friends, and other relatives, as well as by members of racial, ethnic, and sexual minority groups.

Examines and clarifies the role of adult children as service providers to elderly parents. Drawing upon extensive interviews with elderly parents and adult children, the author describes how each group perceives the relative importance of helping services and suggests means by which children can increase helping behavior.

This comprehensive reference provides citations for more than 700 resources essential for planning, funding, initiating, implementing, facilitating, and evaluating a broad range of formal and informal older adult education programs. The work includes books, articles, reports, conference proceedings, government publications, dissertations, leadership guides, audiovisuals, computer programs, and curriculum materials. Each citation is accompanied by a succinct annotation, and the entries are arranged in topical chapters for ease of use. The book also lists aging network and resource organizations, databases, journals, and current laws. Author and subject indexes add to the utility of the volume. Everyone interested in older adult education will find this reference a useful guide to theoretical, managerial, and pedagogical materials.

Providing an overview of the future research challenges for economists and social scientists concerning population ageing, pensions, health and social care in Europe, this book examines how scientific research can provide cutting-edge evidence on income security and well-being of the elderly, and labour markets and older workers.

This collection offers a fascinating comparative analysis of two very different approaches to social policy on ageing. By analyzing the different foundations and systems established by Beveridge in Britain and Bismarck in Germany this book provides a well-constructed and truly comparative perspective on a range of key issues. Each chapter is co-authored by a leading German and a British figure in the field allowing for a unique insight into the differing policies.

Informed by the author's work in dementia care and palliative care as a psychodynamic psychotherapist, Holding Time contributes to an increasing recognition of the importance and value of relationship-centred care in this field. Most of the book is written ethnographically and unfolds as a narrative. It also includes the real words of staff and residents from the care homes in which she conducted observations. Holding Time explores how the relational investment in care is vital alongside a technical one. The book does this by detailing the micro-interactions of everyday care and concern and play before moving out on to a wider, organisational and macro stage. It addresses our fears about dependency on a societal level, and attempts to challenge the foregrounding of the independent, rational individual over all other experiences. The author's contribution is particular to the UK dementia care home setting, and offers a predominantly psychoanalytic take. It is a contemporary exploration of the dementia care field, and contributes to the general movement to improve care of those living (and working) with dementia.

"The rapid Asian fertility transitions of the last few decades will lead to population ageing in the coming decades in one country after another. Societies can choose how they will respond to the rising share of the elderly, but there is no choice about the inevitable demographic trend. In this important volume, ably edited by Evi Nurvidya Arifin and Aris Ananta, demographers, economists, sociologists, and anthropologists analyse the implications of population ageing for family and community welfare and public policy. Most importantly, the authors emphasize the opportunities, as well as the costs of population ageing. Older persons have always been a source of unpaid family labour, and with changes in public perceptions, many healthy and productive elderly can make significant contributions to the broader community and society." - Professor Charles Hirschman, Professor of Sociology, University of Washington. "Ageing is increasingly being recognized as an important emerging issue in Southeast Asia. This book is a timely contribution covering key issues and concerns on the subject and is a clear clarion call to view older persons as assets rather than liabilities. The comprehensive overview and analysis, and experiences from various countries presented by scholars make this book a useful resource for better understanding of the critical issues. The thoughtful proposals provided for necessary future action on concerns that need to be addressed are worthy of consideration especially for building inclusive societies." - Dr Thelma Kay, Director, Social Development Division, UNESCAP, Bangkok. "A welcome and timely volume that realistically considers the challenges that the rapid increase in older persons pose for the family, community and society at large in the context of Southeast Asia. Most importantly, it shifts the focus from viewing older persons simply as liabilities to one that recognizes their value as an asset that can be enhanced through appropriate actions at each of these levels, especially ones that take into account the rapidly changing socio-economic and technological environment in which population ageing is taking place." - Professor John Knodel, Research Professor Emeritus, Population Studies Center and Professor Emeritus, Sociology, University of Michigan.

Although most advanced industrialized countries are facing population aging and other social changes, public long-term care programs for the aged are remarkably diverse across them. This book accounts for the variations in elderly care policy by combining statistical analysis with historical case studies of Sweden, Japan and the USA.

This up-to-date bibliography of heretofore scattered references to nursing assistants includes literature pertinent to the construction of models to improve nursing assistant practice and emphasizes the psychosocial skills that are invaluable to the nursing assistant's work. Annotated reviews center on the tasks and context of nursing assistant work and ways to improve practice through training, organizational development, advocacy, and bargaining. Additional chapters present a tentative psychosocial model of nursing assistant practice, offer six intervention models, and investigate ways of further developing the nursing assistant occupation. Very highly recommended. Choice The role of the nursing home has expanded in the late twentieth century due to both the growing percentage of elderly in the U.S. population and to society's tendency to over-institutionalize people. In recent years, the kinds and quality of care given to the elderly in nursing homes have received intense scrutiny. This timely bibliography focuses on nursing assistants--the personnel who are with the elderly around the clock, doing a variety of tasks, ranging from helping them with basic functions to comforting them during periods of distress. Nursing assistants provide as much as 90 percent of the direct care received by the elderly in the nursing home setting. Emphasizing the psychosocial skills that make the nursing assistant's job so important to the well being of nursing home residents, Geriatric Nursing Assistants collects and annotates the heretofore scattered references to nursing assistants and includes literature pertinent to the construction of models that improve nursing-assistant practice. The first four chapters present the annotated reviews, which are organized in anticipation of the practice enhancement models discussed in Chapter Six. These reviews center on the tasks and context of the nursing assistant's work and on ways to improve practice through training, organizational development, advocacy, and bargaining. Chapter Five offers a tentative psychosocial concept of nursing-assistant practice that requires further development, detailing the various resident psychosocial circumstances to which the nursing assistant might respond helpfully and the kinds of interventions and techniques which the nursing assistant might attempt. In Chapter Six, intervention models--on inservice training, organizational development, advocacy, and bargaining--are presented in ideal-typical forms that recognize the limitations of daily practice; also, these models emphasize rigorous practice and its evaluation. Activities necessary to further develop the nursing-assistant occupation, including political action, are investigated in Chapter Seven, which also considers the moral aspects of a progressive agenda for nursing assistants. This reference seeks to improve services to nursing home residents and represents a valuable, practical contribution to the geriatric field. It will be useful to nursing home administrators and directors of nursing homes who must address ways to improve the working conditions of nursing assistants; to academicians in their research, training, and advocacy efforts; and to the training directors and supervisors in the field who can directly aid nursing assistants in the acquisition of needed knowledge and skills.

With today's availability of Social Security and Medicare, we typically think of the older years as a stage in life where people are supported financially. However, of the more than 40 million old adults currently living in the US, many are struggling financially living below or near the poverty line. They are lacking the assets necessary to see them through a period of life that is often longer than expected and that requires more health and long-term care. While financial vulnerability can be most pronounced in old age, it is often created across decades, revealing itself in later years when there is little opportunity to reverse a lifetime of disadvantage. The concept of Financial Capability refers to both an individual and structural idea that combines a person's ability to act with their opportunity to act in their best financial interests. In Financial Capability and Asset Holding in Later Life: A Life Course Perspective the concept of Financial Capability is used to underscore the importance of acquiring knowledge and skills while also addressing policies and services than can build financial security. The volume assembles the latest evidence on financial capability and assets among older adults using a life course perspective, arguing that older adults need financial knowledge and financial services in order to build secure lives, and that this process needs to begin before it is too late to make effective changes and choices. Broken into three parts, the chapters in this book written by leading experts in the field blend together empirical findings, economic and social theory, and case studies. Part 1 opens the book with a conceptual and empirical overview of financial capability and assets among older adults using a life course perspective. Part 2 presents chapters addressing financial vulnerability of diverse racial and ethnic groups, people with disabilities, and immigrants. Part 3 includes chapters describing current policies, programs, and innovations, including a review of important issues of working and caregiving in later life, and a detailed assessment of age-friendlybanking principles, banking products, services, and policies.

Aging, Health, and Longevity in the Mexican-Origin Population creates a foundation for an interdisciplinary discussion of the trajectory of disability and long-term care for older people of Mexican-origin from a bi-national perspective. Although the literature on Latino elders in the United States is growing, few of these studies or publications offer the breadth and depth contained in this book.

This book contains 14 papers written to celebrate the European Year of Older People and Solidarity between Generations in 1993. Issues of ageing are considered from the perspectives of demography, economics, social policy, sociology, community care, Buddhist philosophy, literature, and gender studies. The contributors from Germany, France and the UK include some of Erurope's most distinguished gerontologists.

Heumann and Boldy define and analyze emerging programs to help the frail and low-income elderly stay out of institutions and age in place in their communities with proper support systems. The case studies presented describe the latest thinking and innovative public program solutions to aging in place in highly developed industrialized countries, including Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Israel, Japan, Sweden, and the United States. Heumann and Boldy link these studies and describe the conditions and constraints under which existing programs function.

Chapter 1 examines the benefits and limitations to aging in place policies and programs on the broadest level, including the economic trends that have created the urgency for new government policies. Chapter 2 presents the classification system of aging in place solutions so that the case examples can be viewed in a comparative context of approach and government commitment. Chapters 3-7 discuss subsidized housing solutions in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and other developed countries. Chapters 8-12 review community support programs in Australia, Israel, Sweden, and Japan. Chapter 13 summarizes the case findings, adds data to the editors' overall classification model, and discusses how government assistance could and should evolve in the future. Aging in Place with Dignity is designed to help government and voluntary-service planners and providers at the federal and local levels deal with the complex and urgent problem of enabling the frail elderly to age in place.

Although residential care and assisted living for older adults has expanded rapidly in recent decades, it has done so in a policy environment beset by confusion and conflicting purposes. Sharon A. Baggett traces many of the current problems to insufficient knowledge of the population these policies are designed to serve. In her examination of the frequently neglected interface between policy and people, she provides a comprehensive review of current federal and state policies, a detailed case study of a state residential care program, and an analysis of the needs and characteristics of persons in assisted living facilities. Baggett's policy overview covers such areas as the confusion between housing and care, supply and demand factors in the economics of residential care, conditions contributing to the increase in numbers of assisted living facilities, and current policies that define and limit the choice of residential alternatives. A case study of Oregon's residential care program shows how that state has adapted federal initiatives to local goals and philosophies of long-term care. Funding mechanisms, regulations, and the role of state agencies in developing and monitoring compliance are discussed. Following a comprehensive profile of facility residents, the question of using functional assessment measures to determine individual needs is explored. Linking the larger policy issues with an in-depth analysis of residents served and actual services provided, this book will be helpful to policy planners and developers, administrators, and case managers, as well as students and academics concerned with housing and assisted living services for the elderly.

Senior Centers in America presents the most comprehensive and current examination of this important topic available today. Written by one of the leading researchers in the field, this book presents an exhaustive review of local and national studies to provide a complete and multi-faceted analysis of senior centers. Major topics include: historical development and changes over time, center resources and organizational characteristics, activities and services, factors associated with participation, participant versus non-participant profiles, linkages and focal point functions, policy issues such as effectiveness and serving the frail, and future senior center scenarios. The book is research-based and identifies areas in need of additional investigation. However, it is also targeted to practitioners and policy makers and is intended to assist them in formulating policy and examining issues central to senior center planning and operation, now and in the future. Krout makes a strong case for the importance and necessity of senior centers, and presents a cogent analysis of the issues and challenges they must respond to in an era of resource shortfalls, shifting social and health policies, and a changing elderly population. Readers of this book will gain a greater insight into senior center issues and a heightened sense of the need to explore these issues much more fully in the future. For this reason, it should be read by anyone involved with social services to the elderly.

In this book, 22 authors discuss development of Ambient Assisted Living. It presents new technological developments which support the autonomy and independence of individuals with special needs. As the technological innovation raises also social issues, the book addresses micro and macro economical aspects of assistive systems and puts an additional emphasis on the ethical and legal discussion. The presentation is supported by real world examples and applications.

"Perspectives on Later Life" looks at interdependency, social living, family conflict, social isolation and social networks, and loss and grieving. Issues of staff training, support and morale are covered in some depth. .".. exposes the inadequacy of training and support to staff based on outdated material reflecting out-dated attitudes ... The emphasis on the primacy of individual experience gives the book a particular relevance in the customer-oriented world of community care with its focus on individual user need, choice and advocacy rights.Community Care Contents: New Understandings of Later Life: Practice and Service ImplicationsAspects of Development in Later LifesDifferent Living Environments of Older PeoplesLater Life in Social ContextsSpecial Difficulties in AdjustmentsLoss and BereavementsI nformal CaresThe Contributions and Needs of Formal Carerss

This book examines the processes by which older people make housing decisions and the impact such decisions have on the construction of their lives. Evidence is included from a major three-year research study, where older people told stories of their lives. The authors argue that housing decisions are not necessarily the result of rational, analytical and objective thinking. The contribution of other ways of decision-making is often hidden, as when people think intuitively, act impulsively, or for essentially emotional reasons.

Over the past few years, the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) has been carrying out research in the field of ageing, with a focus on the role that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can play to promote Active Ageing. IPTS has looked at the issue from several perspectives, including the socio-economic and technological dimensions of both the ageing phenomenon and the Active Ageing policies that the EU is now adopting. "Information and Communication Technologies for Active Ageing" attempts to reflect aspects of the contribution ICT can make to quality of life for older citizens in Europe. Benefits can be found in health, employment, housing and elsewhere. The potential market for innovative solutions in ICT for Active Ageing is crucial for the European economy and for the society at large. The European Union has the opportunity to become a research and market leader through innovative applications and services for ageing. Moreover, the promotion of societal values in Europe regarding ageing can serve as a model for other ageing societies. This book is to be expected to contribute to the debates on ICT for Active Ageing and provide important hints for research in the field fostered by the European Commission's Directorate General for Information and Media.

This book examines the emergent and expanding role of technologies that hold both promise and possible peril for transforming the ageing process in this century. It discusses the points and counterpoints of technological advances that would influence a reconstruction of what it means to age when embedded in a post-human vision for a post-biological future. The book presents a provocative interdisciplinary meta-analysis that contrasts paradigms with inflection points, making the case that society has entered a new inflection point, provisionally labeled as Post Ageing. It goes on to discuss the moderate and radical versions of this inflection point and the philosophical issues that need to be addressed with the advent of post ageing activities: postponing and possibly ending ageing, primarily through technological advances. This book will be a valuable resource for professionals who wish to review the continuum of varied constructs and intersects of technologies ranging from those purporting to enhance the activities of daily living in older adults, to those that would enable the older worker to stay competitive in the labor market, to those that propose to extend longevity and ultimately, claim to transcend ageing itself-moving toward a transhumanistic domain and more specifically, a post-ageing inflection point.