Gerontology Without Borders: Swansea conference highlights diversity in European ageing research
Date published:
Thursday, July 15, 2010Publisher:
CARDIRegion:
International Publication type:
policyThe ageing profile of adults with HIV, migrant care workers, the relationship between sleep and healthy ageing, a glimpse into academic culture and older workers were just some of the topics on the agenda at the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics European Research Conference in Swansea University in July 2010. Paul McGill, Strategic Research Officer at CARDI reports:
Ageing with HIV
Effective retroviral drugs mean that many more adults with HIV are living longer and it is estimated that within five years, half of the people living with HIV in the United Kingdom and United States of America will be over 50. Lisa Power, Head of Policy at the Terence Higgins Trust, delivered a striking presentation on the experiences of older people with HIV.
“The powerful effects of stigma, coupled with social isolation and high levels of depression, paint a picture of a marginalised ageing population at risk,” Ms Power said.
She also noted that ageing is often accelerated by early onset of chronic age-related conditions and managing these will require changes to geriatric care models. Full details of the comparative UK-USA study will be released later this year.
Migrant care workers
An interesting issue arose in a presentation by Carlos Chiatti, Universita Politecnica delle Marche, on migrant care workers in Italy. In Italy the government does not provide care services directly but offers ‘cash for care’; typically the family uses the money to pay for care for older people, which has led to a huge expansion in unregulated care provided by migrant workers.
The working assumption is that without the migrant workers, often poorly paid, care would not be possible. Mr Chiatti said this approach increases opportunities for ageing in place, reduces the need to put older people into institutions and provides more personalised home care. The potential drawbacks are low quality care, risk of widespread undeclared labour, possible exploitation of migrants and abuse of the older people.
Overly long ‘night-time’ in residential care
Dr Rebekah Luff from the University of Surrey noted that nursing homes prefer residents to spend a long time in bed because they have far lower staff ratios at night-time. Diary analysis showed residents were spending an average of 11 hours in bed, significantly more than the time they were sleeping.
Interviews with residents indicated that they made substantial compromises to fit in with care home shift and staffing patterns; this promoted an overly long ‘night-time’ and curbed residents’ choice over when they went to bed and got up.
Dr Luff’s paper was part of a much larger research project, which will be presented at a conference on ‘Sleep, Well-being and Active Ageing’ in October 2010.
SPARC
Professor Peter Lansley, Director of the KT-EQUAL initiative, offered an interesting glimpse into academic culture when he summarised the impact of the Strategic Promotion of Ageing Research Capacity (SPARC) programme 2005-2008, based on a survey of people involved.
Academics overwhelmingly said that the programme had not helped them to write academic papers – they were already trained to do that. However, none of them had previously written a report for stakeholders other than academics; most of them had not given a presentation to other stakeholders previous to their involvement in SPARC and their involvement in the media was also entirely due to participation in SPARC.
Representations from Ireland
Several researchers from Ireland presented at the conference, including Imogen Lyons from the National Centre for the Protection of Older People at UCD, on elder abuse; Fionnuala Jordan, Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, NUIG, who presented on the quality of life of residents with dementia (the DARES Study); Lucia Carragher, Dundalk Institute of Technology, who spoke on storytelling to promote intergenerational reconciliation and learning; and Paul Mc Gill, CARDI, who gave a paper on older workers in Ireland north and south.
