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The purpose of this paper is to describe how migration affects the care of older people in Italy.

The paper is based on anthropological fieldwork by one of the authors. This consisted of in-depth interviews with 20 “badanti” (migrant caregivers), with relatives of older people and with social workers in the city of Verona, Italy. It further included extensive study of secondary materials on the topic of migrant care of older people.

Badanti, Italian families and older people find themselves locked in an uneasy contract: badanti because they are exploited and often unable to find better, formal employment; Italian families because they are aware that they fail to render their moral duty to their aged parents and grandparents; and older people because they feel neglected and maltreated by their children. Yet the three parties also rely on each other to make the best of a precarious situation. The relationship between badanti and Italian elderly highlights the contradictions within Italian politics on care and migration. This case study shows how migrants help Italian families to hold on to the tradition of family care for ageing parents.

The small sample of badanti and families provides a detailed and profound insight of the complexity of elder care in Italy but does not allow generalisation for developments in the country as a whole.

Policy makers should take notice of the indispensability of informal migrant care in present day Italy.

The originality of the paper lies in the in-depth conversations with badanti and in the way in which elderly care is contextualised in the Italian tradition of care and present day politics.

Many countries around the world are facing great challenges from their ageing population with shrinking workforce, this will put more pressure on their financial system and will increase the public spending on care costs provided to older people. Egypt is in the phase of establishing a new law for older people care's rights, a law that will organise how older people in need for care would benefit from access to government financial support and how will families support their older relatives financially and how the care costs will be shared between the older people, their families and the government.

The paper examines the suitability two cost-sharing methods and applying them to assess the effect on the individuals and families' income strain.

The preferred approach can be used for sharing costs as it applies a gradual funding withdrawal by the government and provide more fairness and flexibility for application in different regions. Besides, the parameters of this approach can be used by policy makers to control the levels of funding.

The paper will be the first to discuss the intergenerational fairness from a financial perspective in Egypt to avoid forcing older people into poverty or resorting to poverty trade-off.

Providing high-quality and cost-efficient care of older people is an important development priority for many health and social care systems in the world. This paper suggests a shift from acute, episodic and reactive hospital-centered care toward longitudinal, person-centered and proactive home-centered care. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the knowledge of a comprehensive development strategy for designing and providing home-centered care of older people.

The study design is based on qualitative research with an inductive approach. The authors study development initiatives at the national, regional and local levels of the Swedish health and social care system. The data collection methods included interviews (n = 54), meeting observations (n = 25) and document studies (n = 59).

The authors describe findings related to policy actions and system changes, attempts to achieve collaboration, integration and coordination, new forms of care offerings, characteristics of work settings at home and differences in patients' roles and participation at home and in the hospital.

The authors suggest home-centered care as a solution for providing person-centered and integrated care of older people and give examples of how this can be achieved.

The authors outline five propositions for research and development related to national policies, service modularity as a solution for customized and coordinated care, developing human resources and infrastructure for home settings, expanding services that enable older people living at home and patient co-creation.

Older adults who are or have been incarcerated constitute a growing population in the USA. The complex health needs of this group are often inadequately addressed during incarceration and equally so when transitioning back to the community. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the literature on challenges older adults (age 50 and over) face in maintaining health and accessing social services to support health after an incarceration and to outline recommendations to address the most urgent of these needs.

This study conducted a narrative literature review to identify the complex health conditions and health services needs of incarcerated older adults in the USA and outline three primary barriers they face in accessing health care and social services during reentry.

Challenges to healthy reentry of older adults include continuity of health care; housing availability; and access to health insurance, disability and other support. The authors recommend policy changes to improve uniformity of care, development of support networks and increased funding to ensure that older adults reentering communities have access to resources necessary to safeguard their health and safety.

This review presents a broad perspective of the current literature on barriers to healthy reentry for older adults in the USA and offers valuable system, program and policy recommendations to address those barriers.

This study aims to explore the risk and protective factors of abuse on older adults by family caregivers, with a special focus on the protective role of caregiver resilience in elder abuse.

This cross-sectional survey was conducted on a purposive sample of 600 family caregivers of community-dwelling older adults in Hong Kong (mean age = 71.04 and female = 67.2%). Caregivers reported in a guided interview about elder abuse behaviours, caregiver burden, care recipients’ agitated behaviours, caregiver resilience, self-efficacy, social support and basic demographic characteristics. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictors of different forms of elder abuse.

Caregiver resilience was predictive of lower levels of verbal abuse, physical abuse, injury and financial exploitation but not potentially harmful behaviour (PHB). Social support was independent with all forms of elder abuse, while self-efficacy predicted greater physical abuse after the adjustment of confounding variables. Caregiver burden and agitated behaviours by care recipients remained as significant risk factors in the final models when protective factors were considered.

This study extends current knowledge on the protecting role of resilience in elder abuse in family caregiving. Mixed findings revealed on social support and self-efficacy also highlight the complexity of the prediction of caregiver abuse. Further research should address this area.

The findings of this study warrant the inclusion of caregiver resilience as a key component in developing interventions to prevent elder abuse. Addressing caregiver burden and agitated behaviours have the potential in preventing elder abuse.

The findings raise awareness of the importance of supporting caregivers in the community to prevent elder abuse.

Research concerning the protective factors of elder abuse is in a preliminary stage. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first which successfully demonstrates the protective role of resilience in caregiver abuse on older adults. The findings shed invaluable light on the design of effective interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore stakeholder views on the policy of integrated health and social care for older people with complex needs in Sweden and the issue of trust in implementing the policy.

The study used a qualitative interview design and interviews with nine strategically selected stakeholders. A thematic analysis focused on trust, as defined in the theory of collaborative advantage, was used.

This study of health and social care exposed a lack of trust on political, strategic and inter-professional levels. Two opposing lines of argument were identified in the interviews. One advocated a single government authority for health and social care. The other was in accordance with recently implemented national policies, which entailed more collaboration between local government authorities, obliging them to make joint local agreements. The Swedish experience is discussed in an international context, examining the need for collaboration in integrated care services for older people.

Although the findings are important for the current adjustment in health and social care for older people, the number of interviewees are limited. Future studies will include more regions and longitudinal studies.

Sweden is currently undergoing an extensive adjustment in line with recent national government policy which involves more primary health care and a corresponding reduction in the number of hospital beds. The restructuring of the care system for older people with complex needs is a paradox, as it simultaneously increases the need for centralisation while also increasing coordination and collaboration on a local basis.

Due to the increasing population and diverse lifestyles of aging people in Thailand, close examination of their needs and health care problems is required. Availability and accessibility of food affects the health and well-being of aging people in the community; therefore, to enhance their quality of life, community nurses and health care personnel must understand the variety of foods in their diet, in order to provide suitable and culturally acceptable nutrition for the elderly. The purpose of this paper is to explore the diversity of foods eaten by older people and the social, economic, environmental, and cultural contexts in which they live in the Northern region of Thailand. This is a part of a larger research project of community food management systems for the care of older people.

Critical ethnographic research was employed during the study. The data were collected from 41 primary elderly informants and family members. The researcher collected data by conducting individual in-depth interviews, observation of activities, and focus group discussions. The text data were analyzed by content analysis.

Information gathered from this research reveal nine categories of food which older people are associated with and which include: favorite foods; food provided by others; foodstuffs which should be eaten due to chronic diseases (recommended by doctor); foods to be avoided; snacks; food eaten with others (eating when socializing); food for festivals and cultural traditions; food offered for making merit; and food donated to others.

Utilization of health data, specifically regarding individual dietary diversity, can guide community nurses and health care personnel to provide and promote health that will suit individuals and their families. Community nurses and health care personnel should be aware of the variety of older persons’ diets and the importance of being able to manage and sustain their own nutritional needs. Appropriate nutrition, which is one of the social determinants of health, could improve the quality of the well-being of aging members in the community.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the challenges and opportunities for the well-being of older migrants and refugees in rural Australia by learning from the example of the Bhutanese community in Albury, New South Wales.

This viewpoint focusses on health and aged care barriers that affect the well-being of older migrants and refugees in Australia. It also demonstrates how these can be intensified due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Engagement though agriculture, and a sense of “belonging” strengthen the cultural well-being of the Bhutanese older adults in Albury. However, major issues remain as health-related resources and information are lacking in rural Australia. How this group’s meaningful activities in Albury enabled collaborations to be built is shown in this working example and can provide lessons for other communities that experience similar problems of disconnection as they get older.

The information regarding the Bhutanese older adults in Albury is primarily based on the authors’ personal communication with the General Secretary of the Bhutanese Australian Community Support Group in Albury Wodonga Inc.

Australia’s older population is growing rapidly, and older adults from culturally and linguistically diverse migrant and refugee backgrounds face numerous barriers such as limited linguistic, health and digital literacy. The authors describe common health and aged care issues that affect the well-being of older adults in rural Australia. They particularly emphasize those that occurred or intensified due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This novel information is now especially relevant to the health and aged care sectors in changing and diverse communities not only in Australia but also overseas.

Drawing on the organizational psychology literature and social resource theory, this research aimed to investigate how attitude toward the employer (i.e. loyalty) and attitude toward the client (i.e. approach to work: professional, market-oriented and person-centered) relate to the perceived importance of socio-emotional resources in providing care to older people.

Swedish frontline care staff members participated in an electronic survey using a cross-sectional design. Mediation analyses were conducted to examine proposed direct and indirect effects of loyalty on the perceived importance of socio-emotional resources in care through three different approaches to work in care settings.

In general, the results confirmed the hypotheses. Thus, the analyses showed a positive association between employee loyalty and the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care, which was partially mediated by the person-centered and professional approaches to work. Moreover, the analyses showed that the person-centered approach was more strongly related to the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care than the other two approaches, lending support to the superiority of the person-centered approach in this context.

The study highlights that there exist multiple approaches to work in care settings. Also, the insights about how loyalty toward the employer relates to approach to work in care settings and the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care are novel and of crucial importance to practitioners and the outcomes of care.

This paper aims to explore the aging society situation, long-term care (LTC) policy preparation, COVID-19’s impact on older people, and post-pandemic preparations in Thailand and the implications for The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.

Online databases from international, national, academic agencies and SCOPUS database from January 2019 to July 2021 were utilized for analysis. Relevant literature and data were selected for review.

The evidence suggests that the proportion of the aging population is increasing due to declined fertility and rising life expectancy. Current and future demand for effective healthcare in ASEAN will be better achieved with policies like the Universal Health Coverage and Primary Health Care system. While some countries, specifically Thailand, are developing and expanding their LTC policies, some concerns regarding the active aging policy remain. Most ASEAN countries are using public domain for LTC policies. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has posed a major challenge in implementing LTC and affected the vulnerable aging population in many aspects, including social protection issues in Thailand.

With the support from international organizations, ASEAN countries have framed several policy strategies in response to the increasing aging population, such as providing more LTC in the community. The unexpected challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic compel policymakers to consider resource allocations and community-based services. On the positive side, as the pandemic has made the vulnerable group exposed, social protection issues have been brought to the forefront of the political debate and called for an appropriate policy response.