Description
EUROSPAN GROUP Cultures of Care in Aging by Thomas Boll Dieter Ferring Jaan Valsiner
This book is about caring for elderly persons in the 21th century. It shows that care has many facets and is influenced by many factors. Central topics of this book thus include the relation between the person depending on care and the care giver(s), the impacts of caregiving on the family and the larger social context, as well as socio-cultural and political aspects underlying the growing need for and the practice of formal and informal care. It is evident that care as a real-life phenomenon of our time needs the co-operation ofmultiple disciplines to better understand, describe, explain and modify phenomena of elder care. Such a need for crossdisciplinary research is even more urgent given the increasing population aging and the impending gaps between demand and supply of care. The present book is dedicated to this approach and provides a first substantive integration of knowledge from geropsychology, other gerosciences, and cultural psychologies by a multi-disciplinary cast of internationally renowned authors. Cultural psychology emerged as a valuable partner of the gerosciences by contributing essentially to a deeper understanding of the relevant issues. Reading of this book provides the reader-researcher or practitioner-with new insights of where the problems of advancing age take our caring tasks in our 21st century societies and it opens many new directions for further work in the field. Finally and above all, this book is also a strong plea for solidarity between generations in family and society in a rapidly changing globalized world. Introduction: Culture in the act of caring: Bringing Geropsychology, other gerosciences, and Cultural Psychology togetherPART I:Population aging, demographic trends, and consequences for long-term careHistory of professional care for the elderly personsTurning the `problem' into the solution: Hopes, trends and contradictions in home care policies for ageing populationsPositive aging and concepts of care: Need for bridge-building instead of separationCommentary: Coming of age in a youthful culture: A commentary from cultural psychologyPART II: Caring for the elderly - effects on family and adolescentsOlder persons' care-related preferences: Cultural and cross-cultural influencesCommentary: The carer and the cared: A cultural-psychological elaborationPART III: Scientific and legal concepts of care dependency: Role for understanding, emotional responding, and acting in the field of elder careThe role of informal caregivers in long-term care for older people: Needs and supportsSuffering and compassion in older adult caregiving relationshipsPerson - environment fit and quality of careCommentary: Meaning focused perspectives on suffering, compassion, and caregiving for the elderly: A commentary on Schulz`s & Monin`s modelPART IV: A systematic review of self-care assistive technologies for aging populationPersonnel recruitment and retention in long-term elder careConcepts and strategies of quality assurance in care for older peopleStriving for culturally competent elder careCommentary: Caring through cultureConclusions: Care in aging: Cross-fertilization within and between geropsychology, other gerosciences, and cultural psychology