Policy and practices relating to the active engagement of older people in the community: a comparison of Sweden and Australia

This article compares policy and practices for engaging older people in community life in Sweden and Australia. Barriers and support for active engagement through paid work, social activism, volunteering and aged services are compared. Both countries face issues of ageing populations, services for rural areas and people with small needs. Issues for Sweden were the absence of age discrimination legislation, availability of funds and lack of recognition of the growing levels of volunteering. Issues for Australia concerned the new managerialist approach to services, with associated complexities of access and limited social activism.     

The Medieval Demographic System of the Nordic Countries

It is generally agreed that the marital instability and casual mating characteristic of West Indian family structure depress fertility. These conditions are traced to the mating organization of the slaves. The stresses placed on the Mrican family systems of the slaves are obvious: the continued importation of slaves, most of them young adult males; the ruthless separation of kin through sale or removal; the overwhelming authority of the master, reducing the dependence of children on their parents and the economic role of the male household head. Yet, in spite of these stresses, there is evidence of strong bonds of kinship and sense of family among the slaves.     

Calibrating Hypothetical Willingness to Pay Responses

Experimental data comparing hypothetical and real dichotomous choice responses for two different goods were used to estimate a statistical bias function to calibrate the hypothetical yes responses. The probability that a hypothetical yes response would be a real yes response was estimated as a function of the individual's self-assessed certainty of the hypothetical yes response (assessed on a 0–10 scale) and a variable representing the price level. Without calibration the hypothetical yes responses significantly exceeded the proportion of real yes responses, but after calibration the null hypothesis of no difference between hypothetical and real responses could not be rejected in any of the experiments.     

Autonomy,Choice and Control for Older Users of Home Care Services: Current Developments in Swedish Eldercare

In Sweden, a policy shift towards more individualized eldercare, with an emphasis on consumer choice, has taken place. The aim of this study was to analyze the processes and practices of individualized eldercare, focusing on preconditions for older peoples’ choice and control. Data consist of qualitative interviews with users of home care services (n – 12) and staff (n – 12) and participant observations (n – 7) of meetings between staff and older people. The choice and control available to older users emerged as decisions about ‘what’ care and services, ‘who’ should provide the care and services, and ‘how’ the care and services should be performed. Three approaches to enable older people choice and control over their home care services were revealed: test and revise, services elaborated in close collaboration between users, care managers and home care staff; choices in the moment, users could choose services at each occasion; and quality improvement through competition, competing providers develop attractive services. The findings could guide policy makers in combining the strengths of these approaches to enable older people in need of support to become co-producers in designing, managing, as well as consuming, care and services. Future quantitative research is needed to achieve generalizable knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of different ways to organize eldercare services.     

Are there differences in standard of care for the elderly? A comparative study of assistance decisions in Stockholm

According to Swedish law, an elderly dependent person is entitled to public services in the form of home help in ordinary housing or a place in special housing — i.e. sheltered housing, a residential home or a nursing home. There are no explicit rules for how much home help a person is entitled to given dependency and other factors, nor are there any explicit criteria to guide the admission to special housing. A study was performed in ten districts in Stockholm in order to determine whether there were systematic differences between the districts with regard to the allotment of care and services to the elderly. It was found that there were in fact significant differences that could not be explained by variations in dependency or other factors of importance for the allotment decision. A minor part of these differences was connected to the different background and experience of the assessing person.     

Effectiveness of a stress management program in reducing anxiety and depression in nursing students.

This study sought to develop a stress management program based on the arousal-attribution stress model and to evaluate the effectiveness of the program in reducing anxiety and depression experienced by nursing students. Forty-two sophomore and 34 senior nursing students in a private, sectarian, liberal arts college were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. All subjects were given pre- and posttests consisting of the State form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and the Institute for Personality and Ability Testing Depression Scale. Posttest analysis indicated that the experimental group had significantly lower anxiety and depression than the control group (p less than .05). These results support the use of the arousal-attribution stress model as a theoretical framework for stress management training.     

Informal caregiving for elders in Sweden: an analysis of current policy developments

In Sweden, care of elderly people is a public responsibility. There are comprehensive public policies and programs providing health care, social services, pensions, and other forms of social insurance. Even so, families are still the major providers of care for older people. In the 1990s, the family was "rediscovered" regarding eldercare in Sweden. New policies and legislative changes were promoted to support family caregivers. The development of services and support for caregivers at the municipal level has been stimulated through the use of national grants. As a result, family caregivers have received more recognition and are now more visible. However, the "Swedish model" of publicly financed services and universal care has difficulty addressing caregivers. Reductions in institutional care and cutbacks in public services have had negative repercussions for caregivers and may explain why research shows that family caregiving is expanding. At the same time, a growing "caregivers movement" is lobbying local and national governments to provide more easily accessible, flexible, and tailored support. In 2009, the Swedish Parliament passed a new law that states: "Municipalities are obliged to offer support to persons caring for people with chronic illnesses, elderly people, or people with functional disabilities." The question is whether the new legislation represents a paradigm shift from a welfare system focused on the individual to a more family-oriented system. If so, what are the driving forces, motives, and consequences of this development for the different stakeholders? This will be the starting point for a policy analysis of current developments in family caregiving of elderly people in Sweden.     

WOMEN'S CAREER PATTERNS IN SWEDEN

Although research on and models of career patterns are often implicitly assumed to be of general validity, they are usually coloured by their cultural, ethnic and historical background and by a lack of gender perspective. One of the most critical research gaps concerns changes and transitions in women's careers. The general aim of this paper is to describe career patterns over the life course of women born in the 1950s in Sweden — in terms of shape, level and stability. Data were collected from work histories in the interviews of a sample of Swedish women aged 43 (n?=?109) as part of a longitudinal study. Career patterns were plotted based on life events related to education, family and work. Results revealed relative stability of labour force participation, but not of work hours over the life course. Most of the women worked part time taking care of children for a varying number of years. Continuous full-time work (from 16 to 43) was highly unusual and almost entirely limited to women without children. Nevertheless, career progress in terms of moving to higher career levels was a common feature of the cohort albeit largely restricted to female-dominated occupations. The significance of a generous welfare state supportive for women's career opportunities as well as a highly gender-segregated labour market are discussed. A tentative new model of career patterns, taking account of women's experiences and sensitive to welfare state context, is proposed, as a basis for future research with larger and more diverse samples.

Con frecuencia se asume implícitamente que la investigación y los modelos de los patrones profesionales tienen validez general. Sin embargo, estos estan generalmente matizados por sus antecedentes culturales, étnicos e históricos, y por la ausencia de perspectiva de género. Una de las brechas mas críticas en la investigación concierne a los cambios y transcisiones en la carrera de las mujeres. El objetivo general de este artículo es describir los patrones profesionales en el transcurso de la vida de las mujeres nacidas en Suecia en los años 1950s, en función de forma, nivel y estabilidad. Los datos fueron obtenidos de historias laborales procedentes de entrevistas en una muestra de 109 mujeres suecas de 43 años de edad, como parte de un estudio longitudinal. Los patrones profesionales fueron graficados en base a los eventos de la vida relacionados con educación, familia y trabajo. Los resultados revelaron una relativa estabilidad en la participación en la fuerza laboral, pero no en las horas de trabajo durante la vida. La mayoría de las mujeres trabajaron a tiempo parcial cuidando los hijos por un numero variable de años. El trabajo contínuo a tiempo completo (desde los 16 a los 43 años) resultó sumamente inusual y casi totalmente limitado a las mujeres sin hijos. No obstante, el progreso hacia mejores niveles profesionales resultó un rasgo común de la cohorte, aunque muy restringido a las ocupaciones dominantemente femeninas. Se discuten la significancia de un sistema de asistencia social estatal generoso en el apoyo a las oportunidades profesionales de la mujer y la amplia segregación de género en el mercado laboral. Como base para futuras investigaciones con muestras mayores y diversas, se propone un modelo tentativo de patrones profesionales que toma en cuenta las experiencias de las mujeres y que es sensible al contexto de la asistencia social estatal.