Tuesday, September 14, 2010

An excellent report from MetLife about Ageing in Place


According to the MetLife report on Aging in Place 2.0: Rethinking Solutions to the Home Care Challenge we need some radical new thinking to enable older people to stay in their homes.

The MetLife report focuses on the age 65+ population although it is most applicable to the 85+.

The report contains both interesting facts (like the analysis of disabilities by age) and some nice conceptual models (like the continuum of care spectrum).

If Ageing in Place is your business then this is a must read.

As somebody who is attempting to organise a package of Ageing in Place I have to say that there is a vast gulf between the theory and reality.This is a good report but what it lacks is an injection of the harsh reality of how things work (more accurately don't work) in practice.

Many years ago in the UK there was a lot of time, money and effort put behind the concept of "Care in the Community". In theory this sounded just as plausible as Ageing in Place. Why do we keep people who cannot cope, for mental or physical reasons, in institutions when they could be cared for "in the community".

The easy, and financially beneficial bit, was shutting down the institutions. The hard bit was the community care.

Today the UK is still paying the price for this nice idea. The poor souls are back in institutions, except now they are prisons not places designed to help them.

I do hope the Ageing in Place concept does a better job of things. Dick Stroud

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