Guest Editorials Robert C. Linstrom, ACSW 2
Social Services in Institutions'
I
1. Excerpted from a paper, Frontiers for Social Services for the Elderly in Institutions, written by Robert C. Linstrom and Jerome Kaplan and presented at the 1974 National Conference on Social Welfare. 2. Seven County Health Planning Council, 201 E. Liberty St., Wooster, OH 44691.
Continuing Education for Older Americans by Colleges
Caroline E. Preston, MA 1
The movement in this country to distribute education, work, and leisure throughout the life-span, in middle-age and retirement as well as childhood, appears well underway. The terms continuous or life-long appear more and more frequently in the literature. At Fairhaven College, Bellingham, Washington, there is a program of higher education for the elderly called the Bridge Project (Bridging the Gap between Generations). Funded by HEW, this is a project to develop a non-age stratified educational community. Dormitories have been adapted to provide middle-aged and over-60 students with apartments. To the time of this observation, 33 students, with a mean age of 67, selected on the basis of life-long interests in learning and retired from various careers, have participated in the Project. These students plan their own study programs or degree oj participation in the community. Morale among them is excellent, and their support of the Project is wholehearted, as is that of the faculty and younger students at Fairhaven. I believe the task of assessing the impact of a program such as the Bridge Project requires challenging, innovative evaluation procedures. Recently Hedden (1974) has raised issues about the typical college environment as a necessarily healthy climate for elderly students. Is the mixing of the young and old inherently "good" or is this assumption another reflection of ageism, that contact of the old with the young is inevitably beneficial to the old? Does physical proximity guarantee interaction among the old and the young? Are college health facilities adequate for age-related health problems of the elderly? Can a new subculture with a mixture of differently aged and qualified students really evolve on a college campus? What, if any, are the advantages of continuing education in a residential college environment compared with local programs in community colleges? Is the faculty of such programs really invested in the development of new careers and new roles for the middle-aged and elderly in this society? Are teaching methods and course content optimal for students who may have been long away from the academic .setting? Are older students perceived by the faculty only as dilettantes engaged in ways to consume their leisure or are they, because of experience or wisdom, potentially valuable contributors to the education of all aged students? Only by answering these questions can we learn whether such programs merely engender the aggregation of differently aged people pursuing their development in separate, independent ways but learning little from each other or whether an age-integrated community of students and scholars can learn together because of each other rather than in spite of each other, I. Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Univ. of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle 98195.
98
The Gerontologist
Downloaded from http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/ at Emory University on April 12, 2016
Even though there is general professional agreement that our long-term care institutions must be recognized as dealing with persons who have social/medical needs, there is a critical lack of commitment to the social needs of patients in such institutions. If we are to be serious about the social needs being dealt with effectively in our institutions, one very important dimension is the provision of social services. Even in those institutions which have social services, it is imperative to upgrade and constantly expand on the quality of services provided. The first priority, though, is to establish social services within the very large number of institutions without such services. A 1971 study of 214 proprietary nursing homes in Chicago by Jordan Kosberg revealed that only two had full-time social work staff, 21 had a part-time social worker, and 180 had no social workers at all. The 1972 Social Security Amendments rescinded the requirement for social services to be provided for Medicare reimbursed long-term care. Therefore, it could probably be questioned whether the number of proprietary institutions with such services has expanded since the period of this study. In a 1974 Kaplan-Linstrom survey of I 14 Ohio nonprofit institutions for the aged, it was learned from the 106 respondents that 58% had no social work staff. Of the 45 having social work staff, the staff was full-time in only 25. Of the institutions providing social work services, these services were provided by graduate degreed social workers in only 16 homes. Another 12 employed persons with Bachelor level social work training. In addition to the need to assure social work services, the institutions need to generally improve the social-health environment. A critical factor in the achievement of this is enhancing the basic relationship between the institution and the community. Certainly the availability of sound social work staffing is an absolute element in this regard. With the majority of institutions being proprietary, it seems clear that the improved relationship for these institutional types is to be at the initiative of community organizations with the cooperation of these institutions. Suggested programs to enhance such community relationships are to be found in current publications. It also seems clear that such social components require an impetus either from specific standards in licensure and/or certification or from the mechanisms of standards established in review of facilities by health planning agencies. In addition, areawide aging programs must recognize the need to extend the community effectively to the institutionalized older person.
Social Services in Institutions'
I
1. Excerpted from a paper, Frontiers for Social Services for the Elderly in Institutions, written by Robert C. Linstrom and Jerome Kaplan and presented at the 1974 National Conference on Social Welfare. 2. Seven County Health Planning Council, 201 E. Liberty St., Wooster, OH 44691.
Continuing Education for Older Americans by Colleges
Caroline E. Preston, MA 1
The movement in this country to distribute education, work, and leisure throughout the life-span, in middle-age and retirement as well as childhood, appears well underway. The terms continuous or life-long appear more and more frequently in the literature. At Fairhaven College, Bellingham, Washington, there is a program of higher education for the elderly called the Bridge Project (Bridging the Gap between Generations). Funded by HEW, this is a project to develop a non-age stratified educational community. Dormitories have been adapted to provide middle-aged and over-60 students with apartments. To the time of this observation, 33 students, with a mean age of 67, selected on the basis of life-long interests in learning and retired from various careers, have participated in the Project. These students plan their own study programs or degree oj participation in the community. Morale among them is excellent, and their support of the Project is wholehearted, as is that of the faculty and younger students at Fairhaven. I believe the task of assessing the impact of a program such as the Bridge Project requires challenging, innovative evaluation procedures. Recently Hedden (1974) has raised issues about the typical college environment as a necessarily healthy climate for elderly students. Is the mixing of the young and old inherently "good" or is this assumption another reflection of ageism, that contact of the old with the young is inevitably beneficial to the old? Does physical proximity guarantee interaction among the old and the young? Are college health facilities adequate for age-related health problems of the elderly? Can a new subculture with a mixture of differently aged and qualified students really evolve on a college campus? What, if any, are the advantages of continuing education in a residential college environment compared with local programs in community colleges? Is the faculty of such programs really invested in the development of new careers and new roles for the middle-aged and elderly in this society? Are teaching methods and course content optimal for students who may have been long away from the academic .setting? Are older students perceived by the faculty only as dilettantes engaged in ways to consume their leisure or are they, because of experience or wisdom, potentially valuable contributors to the education of all aged students? Only by answering these questions can we learn whether such programs merely engender the aggregation of differently aged people pursuing their development in separate, independent ways but learning little from each other or whether an age-integrated community of students and scholars can learn together because of each other rather than in spite of each other, I. Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Univ. of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle 98195.
98
The Gerontologist
Downloaded from http://gerontologist.oxfordjournals.org/ at Emory University on April 12, 2016
Even though there is general professional agreement that our long-term care institutions must be recognized as dealing with persons who have social/medical needs, there is a critical lack of commitment to the social needs of patients in such institutions. If we are to be serious about the social needs being dealt with effectively in our institutions, one very important dimension is the provision of social services. Even in those institutions which have social services, it is imperative to upgrade and constantly expand on the quality of services provided. The first priority, though, is to establish social services within the very large number of institutions without such services. A 1971 study of 214 proprietary nursing homes in Chicago by Jordan Kosberg revealed that only two had full-time social work staff, 21 had a part-time social worker, and 180 had no social workers at all. The 1972 Social Security Amendments rescinded the requirement for social services to be provided for Medicare reimbursed long-term care. Therefore, it could probably be questioned whether the number of proprietary institutions with such services has expanded since the period of this study. In a 1974 Kaplan-Linstrom survey of I 14 Ohio nonprofit institutions for the aged, it was learned from the 106 respondents that 58% had no social work staff. Of the 45 having social work staff, the staff was full-time in only 25. Of the institutions providing social work services, these services were provided by graduate degreed social workers in only 16 homes. Another 12 employed persons with Bachelor level social work training. In addition to the need to assure social work services, the institutions need to generally improve the social-health environment. A critical factor in the achievement of this is enhancing the basic relationship between the institution and the community. Certainly the availability of sound social work staffing is an absolute element in this regard. With the majority of institutions being proprietary, it seems clear that the improved relationship for these institutional types is to be at the initiative of community organizations with the cooperation of these institutions. Suggested programs to enhance such community relationships are to be found in current publications. It also seems clear that such social components require an impetus either from specific standards in licensure and/or certification or from the mechanisms of standards established in review of facilities by health planning agencies. In addition, areawide aging programs must recognize the need to extend the community effectively to the institutionalized older person.
