Service Users’ Decision?Making During Transition to Long?Term Care: Social Workers’ and Older People’s Perspectives.

Abstract

As the world’s population rapidly ages, older people are increasingly placed in longterm
care institutions. Although this global trend is supposed to protect older people,
it is unclear whether they have any voice in decisions about such placements.
The aim of this paper is to report a qualitative study into whether and to what degree
social workers involve older people in these decisions. The study employed in-depth
semi-structured interviews, focused group discussion, sociograms, and the daily and
weekly schedules of 17 respondents (7 social workers and 10 older people in longterm
care) in Warsaw, Poland. The findings show that social workers did involve
older people, but only in minor decisions after their placement to help them adapt to
the new situation. This practice seems to be attributable to neoliberal and managerial
tendencies in the policy guidelines that social workers must follow in performing
inherently relational tasks. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of
these findings for social work.