ABSTRACT
This book has attempted to illustrate the complexity and diversity of the needs and circumstances of elderly people. It is therefore a cause for concern that many social workers, even after training, fail to individualise the needs of elderly people, seeing them, rather, as a homogeneous group – ‘The Elderly’ – whose problems are of a practical nature which can be approached according to routine and straightforward procedures. This raises serious questions about the way in which social workers have been taught. Is it because social work teachers have concentrated their teaching too narrowly – in that work with clients at risk focuses on child abuse, that the concept of self-determination is explored only in relation to adolescents or to adults on probation, or that examples of the practice of crisis intervention or task-centred work come from the field of work with young families? Similar questions may be asked of staff from other disciplines who teach social work students. Does the sociology of the family focus on the nuclear rather than the three- or four-generation family? Are concepts of role and status explored in relation to the old as well as the young? Does teaching on human growth and development largely exclude the psychology of ageing? Are learning and cognition discussed in relation both to children and old people? It is important that teaching about ageing and the problems of elderly people is integrated into all parts of social work education – into what might be termed the ‘core’ of the course. Otherwise the notion that social work training and practice is not ‘about’ old people is likely to be perpetuated.
