The Fourth Age - Dailiness Conditioned by Social Care and Health Care
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | My contribution is dealing with the group of older adults who suffer from significant physical or mental limitations and need such help in their everyday lives. Cultural gerontology defines them as fourth agers. Their everyday lives are significantly determined by the form and accessibility of health and social care. The overwhelming majority of them live at home and are taken care of, especially by their families. Even in these cases, institutions of social and health care significantly shape their lives. We do not know much about older adults´ everyday lives and needs. In the Czech environment, a great deal of knowledge is related to the issue of care. However, the idea of fourth agers, as individuals totally dependent on the care and decision-making of others, is wrong. The scope of autonomy and self-management is in fact dependent not only on the level of health limitations, but also on the social, cultural and economic capital obtained in earlier periods of life. Older adults are not passive elements in this process; they actively negotiate and maintain a fragile sense of self in the face of increasing disability and frailty. I am going to focus on the form of their everyday lives, the influence of institutions, as well as the process of gradual loss of self-sufficiency based on the knowledge gained in the research project "The Fourth Age: Identity of Disability During the Period of Active Ageing" supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA15-03156S). |
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