ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how thinking about older people as citizens helps us to practise social work with them, their families and their carers. It focuses on understanding citizenship and its importance for practice with older people. The chapter discusses that understanding citizenship as a process that forms the basis of citizening, de-citizening and re-citizening. Citizenship is a status and identity, enjoyed by most people, which denote their affiliation with a country. The legal status of citizenship is confirmed by official documents and by rights to participate in politics and government. The cultural ideals that value older people highly as citizens in spite of their dependence require a preventive approach to economic and social processes that exclude older people from full participation in society. Adopting a concern for maintaining the citizenship of older people suggests that policy should focus on preventing dependence by emphasizing older people’s full participation as citizens in all the different aspects of their society.
