Social Workers Role in Elderly Work Services

Social Workers Role in Elderly Work Services

Social Workers Role in Elderly Work Services

Introduction

At every stage in our lives, we are confronted by the inevitability of our own ageing. As we progress through the 'journey of life', we are acutely conscious of the ageing process as it affects our bodies, our attitudes, the environment we create for ourselves and our interactions with other people of different ages. In personal relationship, we tend to choose friends and partners from those proximate in age. Most of us are intensely aware of the precise social worker demarcations based upon age and feel uncomfortable if we stray into an age-inappropriate social worker setting. Our everyday social worker judgments are frequently age-based, even if we consciously deny it: for example, most of us, on meeting a new person, will try to guess their age and will make assumptions about them as a result. The attitudes which dominate any society usually reflect the interest of the most powerful an influential social worker groups. Such attitudes may not be shared by everyone, but are accepted by most people without question. Where the assumptions made about old age are negative they lead to ageism, which treats older people not as individuals but as a homogeneous group which can be discriminated against. Ageism creates and fosters prejudices about the nature and experience of old age. These usually project unpleasant images of older people which subtly undermine their personal values and worth. Commonly held ideas restrict the social worker role and status of older people, structure their expectations of themselves, prevent them achieving their potential and deny them equal opportunities.

Impact Of Discrimination On Old People

Age is a powerful discrimination in modern societies. Along with class, gender and race, age is one of the four key components of structured inequality, and no serious social worker analysis can be adequate unless it takes all four components into account. Of these, age is arguably the most virulent, since it is the least acknowledged and most likely to accepted as 'normal' or 'inevitable'. It is significant that, in Britain, legislation to prevent discrimination on grounds of gender, race and disability is well established, but it has taken a recent European Union Council Directive to force the British government to act in the case of age. However, it may be that age discrimination is the most complex and difficult of all the discriminations that effect modern societies, and therefore is very problematic to define, quantify and counter. However, it is very useful to make a distinction between ageism (in social worker relations and attitudes) and age discrimination (in employment) - although the two are used interchangeably. Like all discriminations, ageism can essentially be thought of as the application of assumed age - based group characteristics. By contrast, age discrimination in employment refers to the use of crude 'age proxies' in personnel decisions relating to hiring, firing, promotion, re-training and most notable, mandatory ...