Caroline Holland

The Open University · Faculty of Health and Social Care

As the European population ages, there is an escalating need for age-friendly standards to support development of effective products and services involving information and communication technologies (ICT), thereby improving usability for all consumers, including older people. Co-production with users through inclusive and participatory processes pr...

Research within the H2020 PROGRESSIVE project (http://platform.progressivestandards.org/) has identified good practices in user co-production strategies and methodologies. Early findings from research in the PROGRESSIVE project were shared with relevant stakeholders outside the consortium for consultation and review. The outcomes of that initial in...

Introduction The debate concerning age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC) addresses issues of demographic change at a time of continuing global urbanisation, where inequalities between people and places become central. In many economically developed countries, health and social care policy encourages older people to live in their own mainstream...

Since the early 20th century, population ageing and technological developments have developed apace. Many social changes took place, including the development of digital technologies and the ageing of populations worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of these two phenomena and to think about how certain values and may...

Objectives This study aimed to compare costs of caring for people with dementia in domiciliary and residential settings, central England.MethodsA cohort of people with dementia was recruited during a hospital stay 2008–2010. Data were collected by interview at baseline, and 6- and 12-month follow-up, covering living situation (own home with or with...

This paper describes findings from a two-phase study undertaken in the UK by a multi-disciplinary research team. 111 pairs of people with dementia (PWD) and their family caregivers were recruited from patients referred to a specialist psychiatric liaison service in two English general hospitals. Data was obtained about their quality of life (QoL-AD...

new services for patients with dementia in general hospitals are being widely developed. Little is known of outcomes after hospital for such patients. to establish outcomes for patients with dementia referred to general hospital psychiatric services. prospective cohort study. two UK general hospitals. referrals with dementia to liaison psychiatric...

This article describes findings from a project that explored what happens to people with dementia (PWDs) following discharge from a general hospital to a residential care home. In 15 out of 109 cases referred to a hospital psychiatric liaison team, admission to a residential care home was indicated during the hospital stay. This 'last resort' for f...

This article draws on findings from a study commissioned by the British charity, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, to explore the needs and aspirations of older people who for whatever reason require a high degree of assistance. The study explored the personal aspirations of a small diverse sample (n=26) of hitherto un-researched people living in dif...

In the domestic environment, the physical and social aspects of housing meet the psychosocial construct of home. Within recognisable patterns of the production and consumption of housing, individuals therefore experience home(s) in different ways, according to their own biographies. The stages of human growth, development, and decline reflected in...

This paper describes findings from a recently completed two-phase study undertaken in the UK by a multi-disciplinary research team. The first phase of the study consisted of an on-ward semi-structured interview with the person with dementia (PWD) if they were assessed as able to respond, and with a family member self-identified as involved in their...

Much has been written by policy makers, think tanks, practitioners, gerontologists and others about the importance of involving older people in determining what they need in order to function in the ways that they choose. As part of a larger programme entitled The ‘Better Life’ programme funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in the UK, this stud...

We aimed to investigate quality of life ratings among people with varying severity of dementia and their carers, recruited in general hospital. We recruited 109 people with dementia, and their proxies (carers), from psychiatric referrals of inpatients in two general hospitals in England. From patients, we gathered data on quality of life (QoL-AD an...

Greying hair is one of the definitive physical markers of advancing years. Indeed the phrase ‘going grey’ is a common metaphor for ageing itself, while efforts to soften or lessen the visibility of grey, such as the ‘blue rinse’, have in the past served as a symbol in the stereotyping of older people. The process of greying, from the discovery of t...

During the 1970s, American gerontologist M. Powell Lawton and colleagues saw the person–environment system as fundamental to defining the quality of later life. They proposed the environmental docility hypothesis that weighed whether the more competent the person, the less dependent they are on environmental circumstances. This work was later advan...

This paper considers the social symbolism of hair, how it is managed and styled in later life, and what attitudes to appearance in general and hairstyling in particular reveal about ageism in contemporary culture. The paper draws on findings from a two-year, nationwide, participative study of age discrimination in the United Kingdom, the Research o...

The extra care housing concept of supported independence within a caring community is one that may offer much to minority communities, particularly those with changing patterns of family care. The context for this study is a UK population which is ageing, with a relatively small but growing number of older people within religious and ethnic minorit...

Beginning with the premise that over half of the world’s older population already lives in urban areas (with a continuing trend in that direction), this book aims to further our understanding of the older person’s relationship with such environments in order to inform better social policy and practice. Given the nature of the urban neighborhoods th...

This pan-European project, involving England, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands and Slovenia, has questioned whether current approaches to introducing new technologies are the best way of enabling older people to learn about and use technology in their everyday lives. The project team are therefore exploring whether learning based on self-directed...

This article outlines the development and implementation of participatory research methodology centred on observational techniques. It discusses theoretical understandings of the methodology and how it works in practice. The research explored the use of public spaces by different social, ethnic and activity groups across the course of a 12-month pe...

This chapter discusses age discrimination and ageism. It describes the authors' experiences of coordinating the RoAD (Research on Age Discrimination) project. The authors recognise that this project calls into question their own identities as well as raising fundamental issues about how ‘old’ or ‘older’ is defined in the context of age discriminati...

Introduction Over the years, ‘the scrap heap’ has been a popular motif in campaigns against mandatory retirement. For many older people it has represented the reality of being excluded from the labour market: thrown on the scrap heap, no use to anyone, next stop the workhouse. In the 1950s and 1960s, how to adjust to retirement was the subject of e...

The housing problems of older people ihn our society are highly topical because of the growing number of retired people in the population and, especially, the yet-to-become increasing number of 'very old' people. This book represents a first attempt at bringing together people from the worlds of architecture, social science and housing studies to l...

Public spaces allow people to meet on ostensibly neutral ground, within the context of the whole community. This report draws on a unique study of nine public spaces within one English town viewed across a whole year, carried out by a large team of local observers working alongside academics. The report: - describes the use of green, commercial and...

This book is a detailed ethnographic study in which older people talk in depth about their experiences of living in a range of different places, including 'ordinary' and 'special' housing. From high-rise flat to care home, and from semi-rural to metropolitan locations, many respondents reveal how they have been able to achieve a 'life of quality' b...

This chapter outlines and brings together some key debates and theories about the place attachments that older people make at national, regional and local level. Based on a study of older people living in a range of locations and accommodation, the authors extend existing theories and describe place identity as a component of self identity. In part...

The chapter argues that getting out and about is a fundamental QoL issue. The authors consider the importance of neighbourhood, social contact, transport and security, combining the results of four studies to emphasise the range of material, social and psychological aspects of the environments of old age.

Leading scholars, offering international and multidisciplinary viewpoints, examine the meaning of home to elders and the ways in which this meaning may be sustained, threatened, or modified according to changes associated with growing old. Organised into four sections: The Essence of Home; Disruptions of Home; creating and Recreating Home; Communit...

Mobile and Ubiquitous technologies have the potential to strengthen and enrich geographically dispersed multi-generational family relationships and networks in ways that go well beyond existing telecommunications technologies. Smart home technologies could be developed specifically to facilitate a rich range of interactions between geographically d...

About the book: Care, welfare and community are three key concepts in contemporary social policy. This reader covers a wide range of topics associated with them and relevant to the delivery of care and support to adults. It includes a wide-ranging collection of articles by leading writers and researchers, some previously published, some newly commi...

Accommodation and care for older people is commonly thought of in relation to residential care homes: the collective settings with communal lounges and dining rooms, where older people may live what seems to be a fine balance between individual and group routines. Yet, while there have been changes to the living arrangements of people in relatively...

New technologies, especially smart homes and mobile and ubiquitous technologies have the potential to foster improved quality of life in the older population. Some anticipated benefits are linked to specific applications in areas such as home automation, communication, shopping and health. However, some valuable potential benefits lie in building a...

This chapter focuses on the role of the environments where older people live on the quality of their lives. To understand the dynamic that connects environment to identity the suthors looked at a wide variety of accommodation and neighbourhoods. The authors downgrade rigid formulations of quality of life in favour of the dynamic strategies that peo...

This is a report on the Research on Age Discrimination project. It describes how the research was undertaken and presents findings in a series of chapters on: public places, the marketplace, appearance and fashion, health and the health services, culture and ethnicity, sexuality and sexual orientation, family life and decision-making, care and vuln...

Social work practice in the twenty-first century is continually changing. Contemporary practitioners work in complex areas and have to do so quickly and competently. This text helps qualified social workers, as well as those about to qualify, to build on their initial studies in order to develop professionally. The focus in this chapter is on anti-...

The social sciences have witnessed an explosion of interest in the body as a site of cultural meaning. Yet, to date few commentators have acknowledged the signifying quality of hair as one of the more malleable aspects to image and identity. Hairstyles invite judgements of the person to which they belong. They provide information about social class...

In this presentation we discuss the reflections of family carers of a person with dementia, concerning their caring relationship, their contacts with medical and formal caring staff, and the effect on the caring relationship of the admission of the person with dementia to a care home. It is based on findings from an investigation of what happens to...