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The demand for long-term home care services has been increasing in Taiwan due to the significant growth of the older population. In order to understand the crucial roles that language and communication play in providing better long-term home care services in Taiwan, this study aims to adopt a gerontological sociolinguistic perspective to investigate how professional care workers communicate with older people in this context.

Interviews were conducted with 58 long-term home care workers to identify their communication accommodation strategies for older people, considering their health conditions (dementia), personalities (grumpiness), living status (loneliness) and general principles of long-term home care communication.

The study's findings provide practical insights for long-term home care workers to enhance their communication skills while interacting with older people.

The results could contribute to improving the quality of care services provided to older people and address their specific communication needs.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first attempt to identify contextually specific communication accommodations to older people in existing literature of gerontological sociolinguistics that addresses language, communication and older age. The salience of the findings in this study can be further enhanced if they were applied in the development of training programs for future Taiwanese long-term home care workers.

This qualitative study set within Northern Ireland aims to explore professional perspectives on the application of evidence-informed practice to the adult safeguarding threshold screening process.

Data was gathered from seven social workers in one health and social care trust area, who perform the designated adult protection role, through individual semi-structured interviews in one region of Northern Ireland. The interview schedule comprised of a series of questions examining the role of the designated adult protection officer and included three vignettes (Appendix). A thematic analysis was undertaken using NVIVO software.

This paper reports main findings under the themes of: the role of the designated adult protection officer, threshold decision-making, evidence-informed practice and service improvement. One of the main findings was that professionals viewed the current process as too bureaucratic, and there was a desire to engage in more preventive safeguarding in collaboration with service users. There was a need to promote awareness of evidence-informed practice as it applies to the threshold screening process. Furthermore, the study raised the question of the need to consider the application of models or methods of assessment to the threshold screening process.

This in-depth exploration of the role of designated adult protection officers in Northern Ireland provides a valuable insight into the complexity involved in managing adult safeguarding referrals and investigations. This study adds to the existing knowledge base, identifies potential service improvements and highlights the gap in evidence-based practice as it applies to the threshold screening process. Threshold screening of adult safeguarding referrals remains a subjective process and is open to interpretation and differences in professional judgement. The study highlights the need to consider the application of quality improvement methodology to the threshold screening assessment and the need to promote the exchange of safeguarding knowledge.

Spoken service language is critical for service experiences and human welfare in many service settings. However, little is known about how spoken service language can enhance customer well-being in transformative service contexts. This paper explores spoken service language and well-being for customers experiencing vulnerability in a transformative service context, informed by an empirical account of the human welfare service of residential aged care.

Situated within transformative service research (TSR), this study was guided by a theoretical framework of service language and adopts a strengths-based approach to customer experiences of vulnerability. A qualitative multiple case study methodology was applied to explore carers’ perspectives on spoken service language and well-being from three residential aged care homes in Australia.

The findings demonstrate five spoken service language practices and four principles of spoken service language for well-being that co-create customer well-being and support the alleviation of customer experiences of vulnerability. Conceptualised as transformative spoken service language, the spoken service language practices and principles collectively recognise, support and leverage residents’ capabilities and uplift customer well-being, by enacting a process of mattering highly salient to transformative service contexts.

This study is the first to conceptualise how employee spoken service language can be used to support customer well-being and enhance transformative value for customers experiencing vulnerability to align with the goals of TSR. Practically, the study advocates for a greater awareness and more considered use of transformative spoken service language in human welfare and other transformative service contexts.

This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences of Taiwan’s community-based long-term care service stations.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight managers selected from stations located in the counties with the highest proportion of elderly people.

The results are as follows: the main services offered by the stations include health promotion activities, congregate meal programs, respite care and making house calls; government subsidies constitute a major proportion of the service stations’ funds, followed by user payments and external donations; the adversities encountered include frequent policy revisions, the dwellers’ reluctance to participate in the activities, manpower shortages and subpar service quality; and the effects of the stations on the community include achieving aging in place, providing more options for life after retirement, mitigating caregivers’ burden, expanding the elderly’s social networks and strengthening their health literacy.

The results of this research can understand the benefits and difficulties of Tier C service centers in Taiwan. Also, the practical experiences provide some suggestions for policies and training. Future studies can focus on establishing systematized training programs and standardizing the service personnel’s competence.

Health care organizations’ decision-making for the future relies on anticipating changes. Reliable predictions are becoming increasingly difficult, creating anxiety and requires long-term adaptive planning to cope with unforeseen circumstances. The purpose of this study is to gain insights into the awareness of uncertainties that decision makers in healthcare have, particularly when making long-term investments.

This is a qualitative study with an explorative purpose. The data were collected through semi-structured and open interviews with board members of long-term care organizations.

The study revealed that respondents are most uncertain about the future financing of their real estate system. Another concern revealed is about the shortage of care professionals combined with an increasing demand for future care. Despite most decision makers do recognize uncertainties during the decision-making process, decision makers hardly address the level of these uncertainties. Although this study did find that some decision makers are aware of deep uncertainties, in terms of “unknown unknowns,” they have no actual approaches for dealing with such situations.

Decision makers at healthcare organizations are uncertain as to their ability to anticipate technological, economic, social and political developments, as well as predict future healthcare system transformations. Some decision makers are aware of deep uncertainties, in terms of “unknown unknowns” and “unidentified unknowns,” but they lack an actual approach to deal with such situations. This study examines how strategies adapt to unforeseen developments or how to deal with deep uncertainties in healthcare as complex adaptive system.

When the factors affecting health expenditures are examined in the literature, it is seen that one of the most important factors is income. In this context, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between out-of-pocket health expenditures and disposable personal income and revealing the income elasticity of health expenditures.

Therefore, short/long-term coefficients were obtained by analyzing Westerlund (2007) co-integration analysis and pooled mean group (PMG) regression methods for 22 European Union (EU) member states during the period 2003–2017. In addition, a comparison of the long-term coefficients for each country was obtained with augmented mean group (AMG) estimator.

The results of the AMG and PMG tests show that the long-term coefficients between disposable personal income and health expenditures are 0.83 and 0.97, respectively. These results imply that there is a significant relationship between the variables, and that health care should be categorized in the group of normal goods. However, the fact that the long-term coefficient is very close to 1, despite being classified in the category of necessity goods, requires more care to be taken in evaluating whether health services are luxury goods or necessity goods.

The use of second generation econometric tests on both cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity demonstrates the value of the study. On the other hand, obtaining similar results by investigating the relationship between variables using different appropriate econometric models reveals the importance of the methodology used in this study. It reveals important details in terms of the literature regarding the long-term and short-term results obtained in this study.

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.

Despite the large number of Indonesian health-care workers working as migrant care workers in Japan, there is a lack of studies that have investigated this phenomenon or assessed the working conditions of Indonesian care workers working in Japanese aged-care facilities. This study aims to explore the work experiences of Indonesian care workers in Japan.

A qualitative descriptive research design was used, and a purposive sample of 18 Indonesian health-care workers (12 nurses and six midwives) who work as care workers in Japan participated in this study. Semistructured interviews were conducted with these participants between December 2022 and January 2023. The data were analyzed using content analysis. The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research checklist was used to report this study.

Four key themes emerged from the data: easy but mentally challenging, being a care worker is a blessing, working in a partially Muslim-friendly environment and enjoy living: prefer to stay longer.

The work experiences of Indonesian care workers in Japan are complex and multifaceted. By understanding their experiences and needs, the authors can work toward creating more inclusive and supportive workplaces for all.

Current and predicted continued dramatic increases in international migration and ethnocultural diversity of older adult cohorts pose challenges for health care services. Review studies on ethnoculturally diverse older adults and health care show a lack of focus on their service use experiences. This study aims to report a meta-ethnography that addresses this knowledge gap through answering the review question: How do ethnoculturally diverse older adults who are immigrants experience health careservices?

The authors applied a seven-phase method of meta-ethnography to guide the review. The authors conducted two literature searches (April 2018 and June 2020) in MEDLINE, CINAHL, Embase, Sociological Abstracts and Abstracts in Social Gerontology that yielded 17 papers eligible for review.

“There’s always something positive and something negative” is the overarching metaphor for answering the review question. Findings highlight positive and negative tensions within ethnoculturally diverse older adults’ health care use experiences of understanding and being understood, having trust in providers and the health care system, having needs, preferences and resources met and desire for self-care over dependency. The majority of experiences were negative. Tipping points towards negative experiences included language, fear, provider attitudes and behaviours, service flexibility, attitudes towards Western and traditional health care and having knowledge and resources.

The authors propose concrete actions to mitigate the tipping points. The authors discuss policy recommendations for health care system changes at the micro, meso and macro service levels to promote positive experiences and address mainstream service policy inequities.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore the existing evidence around dementia services and interrogate the overarching UK policy development relating to service inclusion of black and minoritised groups. The paper will go on to identify the implications for the dementia wellness pathway and make recommendations regarding how services can be more inclusive.

This paper examines the policy/practice landscape around dementia care provision and observes if lessons can be learnt to improve health outcomes for people living with dementia from black and minoritised communities.

A review of dementia policy demonstrates how opportunities to improve the awareness, diagnosis and post-diagnostic support for minoritised communities are being missed. The outcomes of this mean that individuals are denied vital treatment and support, which could enhance quality of life and delay the progression of dementia.

The authors’ premise is that not meeting the dementia support needs of less-heard communities has negative financial as well as social and health-related outcomes and has wider resonance and implications for all stages of the dementia wellness pathway. Moreover, there is a legal responsibility for public services to provide culturally sensitive, responsive, appropriate and available care, to all people, without discrimination.

This paper offers a valuable review of policy and practice around dementia care in the UK and makes recommendations to improve health outcomes for people living with dementia from black and minoritised communities.