ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the theoretical and conceptual framework to the field-work component of the Providing Integrated Health and Social Care for Older Persons programme. It explores the need for and impediments to providing integrated care for older people in Europe. The chapter considers the factors that make integrated support of older people particularly important and also considers the particular impediments to the provision of integrated care that often result in services for older people being more fragmented than those for younger people with similar health and social difficulties. In terms of women’s higher life expectancy and the ageing of the population as a major trend in European countries, women are a specific target group of integrated health and social care. Institutional ageism can affect integration directly and indirectly. The chapter focuses on the objective and subjective experience of users before finally considering approaches that take a broader societal perspective considering issues such as social integration.
