29 April 2004 - Publication of DWP Research Report: Independent Living in Later Life: a literature review
Research was commissioned to feed into development of a large scale study on independent living and to review literature in this subject area in relation to later life.
Key findings
The different groups involved with older people (from service providers to researchers to policy officials) differ in their interpretation of the concept of independent living, and, therefore differ in the means of promoting the concept for individual older people. The definition of ‘independence’ is as difficult and diverse as that of ‘quality of life’.
Health, financial and social service policies and service provision developed for older people are often determined by the perceptions of policy makers and service providers and not by older people themselves. Key to providing joined up user-orientated services to facilitate independent living in later life is a greater understanding of older people’s perspectives.
Full and active citizenship, as endorsed by the United Nations and the European Commission, brings with it both rights and responsibilities, and the importance of this citizenship seems to be a cornerstone in the move to ensuring independence in old age for individuals and for older people in general.
Living arrangements and housing is one of the few areas of research to explicitly address independence. A central theme is that independence is clearly related to the idea of enabling older people to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. Much of the discussion is based on limited empirical investigation in terms of addressing the preferences of older people and future older people themselves.
Few studies have explicitly addressed both independent living and economic security. Much of this is concerned with the consequences of an ageing population on retirement income from a macro perspective, i.e. relating to pension schemes and the pension mix.
The family is more important today for middle aged and older generations than was the case 10–15 years ago. In contemporary society, there are, however, many competing demands on and roles for family members – one of which is care-giving, for children, spouses, parents, parents-in-law, and perhaps even other family members or friends.
The benefits of taking part in such activities thus involve both those arising from developing and sustaining a social network, as well as healthy activity, and the psychological benefits from structuring one’s time after retirement.
One of the key messages arising from this literature is that independence should not be confused with isolation. It does not equate to a lack of support from formal or informal sources. Indeed, supportive services may be enabling but they may also be disabling.
DWP Research Report No.137 is published on 29 th April 2004. A summary and copy of the report are available on the DWP website at: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/
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