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The importance of assistive technology (AT) in helping older people maintain independence is increasingly recognised in policy. The article reports on a modest piece of research, funded by the Helen Hamlyn Foundation, that looked at an important corollary of this development — the provision of relevant and appropriate information about AT. The research involved mapping both AT and information sources, focus groups with 28 users aged 75 and over and 12 carers, interviews with 40 professionals and information providers and a postal questionnaire to 131 care home managers (response rate of 45%). The findings point to the large volume of available information, but suggest that there are problems in identifying needs and in accessing all necessary information. Professionals share these problems and organisational issues impact on professional capacity to provide satisfactory information. The situation in care homes appears ambiguous in terms of responsibility for AT provision for residents and hence for information. The researchers concluded that there is considerable scope for improving both access to information and the design of that information. They also concluded that there are terminology issues that need addressing in further research.

Most abuse affecting older adults in the UK, as across Europe, takes place within caring relationships, where one person is disabled and needs care/support. This paper critically appraises two of the key theoretical explanations. First, feminist theories of “intimate partner abuse” tell us that it is mostly men who perpetrate abuse against women. Second, “carer strain”: the stress caused by caring responsibilities, often with inadequate help from services. Neither fully reflects the complex dynamics of “dangerous care” leading to a lack of voice and choice in safeguarding responses. This paper aims to articulate the need for an overarching theoretical framework, informed by a deeper understanding of the intersectional risk factors that create and compound the diverse experiences of harm by disabled people and family carers over the life course.

The critical synthesis of the theoretical approaches informing UK policy and practice presented here arises from a structured literature review and discussions held with three relevant third sector agencies during the development of a research proposal.

No single theory fully explains dangerous care and there are significant gaps in policy, resources and practice across service sectors, highlighting the need for joint training, intersectional working and research across service sectors.

Drawing both on existing literature and on discussions across contrasting policy and practice sectors, this paper raises awareness of some less well-acknowledged complexities of abuse and responses to abuse in later life.

There are clear theoretical, policy and practice tensions in conceptualising social or long-term care as a “right”: an enforceable choice. The purpose of this article is to address the following questions: Do disabled and older citizens have the right to long-term care? What do these rights look like under different care regimes? Do citizens have the right or duty to *provide* long-term care? It is already known that both formal and informal care across all welfare contexts is mainly provided by women and that this has serious implications for gender equality.

In this article, the author takes a conceptual approach to examining the comparative evidence from developed welfare states with formal long-term care provision and the different models of care, to challenge feminist care theory from the perspective of those living in care poverty (i.e. with insufficient access to long-term care and support to meet their citizenship rights).

Drawing on her own comparative research on models of long-term and “personalised” care, the author finds that different models of state provision and different models of personalised care provide differential citizenship outcomes for carers and those needing care. The findings indicate that well-governed personalised long-term care provides the best outcomes in terms of balancing potentially conflicting citizenship claims and addressing care poverty.

The author develops new approaches to care theory based on citizenship and care poverty that have not been published elsewhere, drawing on models that she developed herself.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) extending quality life (EQUAL) initiative, specifically supports interdisciplinary user‐focused design, engineering and technology research concerned with enhancing the independence and quality of life of older and disabled people.As well as establishing a new UK community of researchers and a new scientific approach to ageing research the initiative has successfully contributed across a broad front to policy and practice. In a short time it has provided a much‐improved understanding of the potential contribution of new approaches to design, engineering and technology to enhancing the lives of older people and has engendered confidence in the potential of this type of ageing research.

This article reports on a national project being developed by the Royal National Institute of the Blind. It is aimed at improving health and social care for older people with sight problems, by focusing on some of the standards of the National Service Framework for older people and applying them to older people with sight problems. The project will identify, develop and disseminate good practice by establishing two pilot sites and conducting desk research.

The ramifications of assistive technology for both current and future service provision are wide. In recent years, policy makers have become increasingly aware of the potential of these services to maintain older and disabled people in their own homes. The purpose of this paper is to report on a literature review and provide illustrations of how the evidence can be used to underpin the development of assistive technology services for older and disabled people and disabled children. The aim is to support the development of user‐focused, accessible services.

Purchasing decisions for “aids to daily living” (ADL) by the disabled and elderly tend to be commodity based to which value cannot be added through sales propositions. This paper reports research that investigated disparate customer segments in the “grey” sector. Quantitative research suggested that in order to develop market potential, different consumers need to be targeted and communicated to in different ways. Different psychographic categories had different personality based characteristics that need to be tapped into in order to better capture attention and interest. The traditional view of older people needing a rehabilitation product as being “desperate” needs to be changed through the use of promotional messages concentrating more upon humour and wit.

Every employee embodies manifestations of every demographic that attach to him or her different minority and majority statuses at the same time. As these statuses are often related to organizational hierarchies, employees frequently hold positions of dominance and subordination at the same time. Thus, a given individual’s coping strategies (or coping behavior) in terms of minority stress due to organizational processes of hierarchization, marginalization, and discrimination, are very often a simultaneous coping in terms of more than one demographic. Research on minority stress mostly focuses on single demographics representing only single facets of workforce diversity. By integrating the demographics of age, disability status, nationality, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and religion into one framework, the intersectional model proposed in this chapter broadens the perspective on minorities and related minority stress in the workplace. It is shown that coping with minority stress because of one demographic must always be interpreted in relation to the other demographics. The manifestation of one demographic can limit or broaden one’s coping resources for coping with minority stress because of another dimension. Thus, the manifestation of one demographic can determine the coping opportunities and coping behavior one applies to situations because of the minority status of another demographic. This coping behavior can include disclosure decisions about invisible demographics. Therefore, organizational interventions aiming to create a supportive workplace environment and equal opportunities for every employee (e.g., diversity management approaches) should include more demographics instead of focusing only on few.

In the recent government Comprehensive Spending Review there is a promise of a Green Paper on social care services for disabled and, especially, older people. The platform on which any new proposals will be built is likely to be heavily influenced by the Government's personalisation agenda for public services. It is timely, therefore, to reflect not only on the strengths but also on the potential pitfalls of a major stream, self‐directed support, for the personalisation agenda in adult social care. Anticipating and guarding against unintended consequences of policy are as important as championing the positive opportunities promoted by the policy.