Äldre invandrare och den offentliga äldreomsorgen - bistånd, behov och särskildhet

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether an increasing amount of elderly immigrants will set new demands upon the public eldercare. The focus is on the officials whithin the public care of elderly in Västra Götaland district, and their experiences.

A second purpose of this study is to add the experiences of the officials to former research treating the topic of elderly immigrants and their experiences of the public eldercare in Sweden.

The survey has been carried out through interviewing all together seven officials working within the public care of elder in varying districts of Västra Götaland. The interviews have later been summoned under four different themes such as, “Culture, customs and tradition”, “Interaction and communication”, “Information” and “The future of the public eldercare”. The study indicates that our result based on the interviews, is in several references corresponding to former research on the topic. One of the main results implicates that the elder immigrants as a group is over represented among elder applying and depending on care provided by family and relatives. Moreover, the results shows that the public care of elderly should and shall be subsequently adapted to fit the needs of the individual. Focus should therefore not lie upon differences due to culture or origin, but exclusively due to person. The study also conveys that there are a big lack of information about the care of the elderly in other languages than swedish. The language was seen by the informants to be one of the biggest challenges in their work with elder immigrants.

Nevertheless, both earlier research and the officials says that coming generations of elderly with new demands on the official care of elderly, along with the future, will generate some sorts of changes.