Identifying needs in elderly clients with migrant backgrounds: are understandings of cross-cultural interaction, ethnic ‘Otherness’ and gender relevant for need assessment practice?

This project departs from the research gaps that exist in the debate on institutional categorization as far as the implications of ethnic ‘Otherness’ and gender are concerned. There is also a gap in the manner in which such understandings affect the political economy of care that this project aims to address. The project focuses on need assessment practice in elderly care and aims therefore to explore if and how understandings of cross-cultural care interaction, ethnic ‘Otherness’ and gender affect the manners in which need assessment processes legitimize and restrict access to certain elderly care services. Two studies will be conducted in this project: one focusing on the understandings that need assessors of elderly care uphold and another one which will depart from the documentation that need assessors use in order to legitimize the services that they make available to elderly care applicants. Data for the first mentioned study will be collected through focus groups interviews (a total of 10 focus groups comprised of 7-8 need assessors each will be conducted) while data for the second study will be collected via need assessment documentation (a total of 150 cases will be analyzed). Theoretically speaking, the project will contribute primarily to the sociological debate on institutional categorization, the gerontological debate on the political economy of care and the debate within the caring sciences that focuses on culture-appropriate care. Empirically speaking the project will contribute to practitioners and policy makers’ understandings of the manner in which the understandings in question affect the manner in which needs are assessed within the context of elderly care.

Grants:
2009-2010 funded by internal funding awarded by Linköping University; from 2011-2013 funded by external funding awarded to the PI by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.

Publications:
•Forssell, E. & Torres, S. (2011). Social work, older people and migration: an overview of the situation in Sweden. European journal of social work, First published on: 08 June 2011 (iFirst)

Conference presentations:
•Torres, S; Forssell, E. & Olaison, A. (2011). Need assessment in Swedish elderly care: are understandings of ethnic ’Others’ relevant? (Paper presented at the 10th Conference of the European Sociological Association, September 7-10 in Geneva, Switzerland).