ABSTRACT
Our colleagues from other disciplines also look forward to our performance catching up with our promise. A representative view, from a psycho-
Jeffery & Saxby are in no doubt about what they see as the profession's most important contribution to the well-being of the elderly:
"What we must do is to disseminate skills and knowledge as widely as possible and so influence the behaviour and attitudes of the caregivers and service-providers. Because of their large numbers, greater contact and potential to control environments, they are much more influential with individual elderly people in need of care than scarce and expensive psychologists can be." (p.263) Routes to improving care, they suggest,
include: facilitating service functioning (enabling networks of formal or informal carers to mesh more smoothly); evaluation of quality of care taking into account expressed needs of old people; applied research, most particularly into effects of both physical and social environment; education and training to promote coping behaviours and well-being in individuals; and influencing the community by offering support to local resources for old people, influencing policies of local and national government, care agencies, contributing to projects designed to extend the contribution that the elderly
make to society, and by using the media constructively in attempting to present theories and findings in a popular format.
