Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• d, Bruce Francis

Titel

Community Response to Social Need: A Study of the Dependent Aged in Canberra

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

1970

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In Australia, the care of the aged has traditionally been a family responsibility with the State providing only back stop services in the form of old mens' homes, asylums and State hospitals. The twentieth century has seen major changes in the quality of services for the aged and subtle alterations in social attitudes. Demographic changes have made the over sixties a significant section of the population of Western societies, and increased affluence and urbanization have brought along with them a redefinition of their rights and status in society.While the primary focus of care is still the family, it is clear from the concern expressed by political and major welfare organizations that the aged have emerged as a distinct social group for whom there is some feeling of collective responsibility. The secondary responsibility for care has been transformed from the austere institutions of the State to a complex network of services provided by community organizations - municipal and town council, local church and service organizations, many subsidized by State Government grants which are in turn financed by the Commonwealth . This growing emphasis on community responsibility for their own aged has resulted in a variety of people becoming concerned with what facilities they should be providing in their own locality. "What are the needs of the aged in our district?" is a question being asked by mayors and aldermen, service committees of Rotary, Lions, Apex and Jaycees, conferences of the St Vincent de Paul and Brotherhood of St Lawrence, trusts set up by churches, nationalorganizations for aged migrants, the Soroptomists Clubs and the Country Women's Associations. The enquiring organization has a great number of models of services to choose from: old peoples clubs, nursing homes, special housing, villages for the aged, day centres and night shelters. As they investigate these facilities in other places, they will find that the people running them know all about the aged a nd wha t their needs are . Theorie s a bound : "The aged mus t be kept active or they will det eriorate ; the aged are entitled to rest in their final y ears and should not be pressed into activity ; the place for the aged is with their families; three generational living does not work; the aged are happier with their own age group; they should be integrated into the community; retirement opens up whole n ew vistas of living; retirement is a ruthless ejection of able men from work in their prime of life ."The bewildered committee may b e forgiven for shelving its plans, for appointing a sub-committee or for demanding that the government advise them . The mor e progressive groups decide they will hold a survey. A social scientist from the University is hired, or prevailed upon to do the survey . The survey is desi g ned - it takes twice as long and costs twice as much as was originally envisaged, and finally the report comes out. It is complicated, full of tables and carefully wo rded in terpretations . It is professional and the local organization is proud of it. But it does not really settle the argument whether they should put their money into Meals on Wheels, an old peoples' club, or a community home nu rsin g programme.It is with sympathy a nd respect to both the we lfa re organization and the valiant social scientist that this thesis is written . Having sat in both places , as provider of and investigator of services for the aged, it is a thesis undertaken in a mood of great humility. My task will be to attempt to define problems and objectives in searching out the needs of the aged, to examine what some other people have done before, and to submit a nother field experiment to the accumulation of knowledge and experience to that which is already available. This thesis does not set out to test directly a specific sociological theory of ageing, although its results clearly have implications for such theories. It intends rather to present an a nalysis of the distribution of community effort for the aged in a specific locality, to J try and establish where the problem group aged came from and how they came to need community support, and to see how efficiently our community services meet their needs. It is primarily a study in methodology of investigation of community services and problems of the aged. Its technique, while statistically simple, is capable of being handled by a single investigator and of producing information which is of value to those whose job it is to draft social policy for small communities or to advise policy makers on the optimal use of community resources to solve local problems.