Objectives: This study aims to identify the relationship between psychosocial factors and unmet needs among community-dwelling older adults who have received or who expect to receive formal home-based aged care services.
Methods: A subsample of the national Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers was used to examine the prevalence of having any unmet needs among older adults navigating care. We also examined associations between older adults' psychosocial factors and their unmet needs using logistic regression.
Background And Objectives: The shift to consumer-directed aged care means that older adults need to play a more active role in navigating the complex aged care system for adequate health and social services. Challenges in the navigation process result in unmet needs and difficulty accessing available resources. This scoping review investigates how aged care navigation is conceptualized in literature and interrogates research on the experiences of older adults navigating community-based aged care services with or without support from their informal carers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Australia, the response to HIV, hepatitis C and hepatitis B has largely been through the constructed category of 'blood borne viruses' which treats these viruses as an interconnected set of conditions with respect to their mode of transmission. In this paper, we explore how people understand their viral infection, and compare the logics underpinning these different understandings. In-depth interviews were conducted with 61 participants who were either living with a blood borne virus or were the family members of people living with them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn recognition of the broader relational aspects of viral infections, family support is considered important when someone is diagnosed with a blood-borne virus (BBV), such as HIV, hepatitis C (HCV) and hepatitis B (HBV). However, families' own support needs are often not a priority in service provision within the BBV sector. In this article, we draw on qualitative interviews with 20 key informants working in various professional capacities in health, social policy, care and advocacy sectors in Australia, and explore their experiences and perspectives on family inclusivity in their services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper analyses in a comparative perspective the degree of convergence in migrant families' access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and work/family policies in two different welfare state regimes: Italy and in Australia. Using a framework based on the concept of conditionality-or the notion that access to support is conditional and based on an individual's personal and familial characteristics, circumstances or behaviors--the analysis examines the extent to which policies designed to support families with young children are accessible to migrant families. It argues that access to ECEC and family policies is restricted in both Italy and Australia according to a series of conditions, but that these conditions apply differently to people of different migrant statuses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA virus has a social history. In the case of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV, this history is one involving stigma and discrimination, advocacy and activism, and recent dramatic improvements in treatment. These social histories influence the experience of people who live with the viruses, and those who work with them.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Centre-based aged care services are a key site of early intervention and support for people with dementia and their carers. This paper examines the impact of new aged care funding structures on centre-based aged care service accessibility and delivery. It also examines the challenges and opportunities for change facing the sector in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is increasing emphasis in research and at the level of international human rights bodies such as the United Nations on the gendered contours of age-based disadvantage and discrimination, and the cumulative effects of gender inequalities over the life-course on outcomes in later life. However, to date, the role of mental health in shaping the age/gender nexus in the realization of human rights has received little attention. In response, this paper aims to 1) elucidate the economic, social and cultural disadvantages and discrimination faced by older women living with mental health conditions; and 2) identify opportunities to protect their human rights.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContemporary sociological work has emphasised that family is not static, but actively shaped by ideas of who and what makes family. Disclosure of an illness, including diagnosis of stigmatised infections such as HIV, hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus, can change the dynamics of family relationships. This paper draws on 61 qualitative semi-structured interviews conducted between 2017 and 2019 with people in Australia with one or more of these blood-borne viruses (BBVs) and their family members, to understand the experiences of serodiscordant (mixed viral status) families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Social isolation is associated with an increased risk of adverse health outcomes, including functional decline, cognitive decline, and dementia. Intergenerational engagement, i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF'Risk' has long been at the centre of expert and popular perceptions of transmissible and stigmatised blood-borne viral infections, such as HIV and viral hepatitis. There is a substantial body of research on transmission risk among couples with mixed viral infection status (serodiscordance). But we know very little about how families affected by HIV and viral hepatitis engage with understandings of infectiousness and how these shape family relationships in different ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper argues that blood-borne viruses are relationally embodied, providing an alternative ontology to the individualising tendencies in medical science, and a more inclusive analysis of serodiscordance (mixed infection status) than the literature's focus on transmission risk in couples. We know little about the wider world of significant relationships in the lives of those with blood-borne viruses. People with HIV and hepatitis C are in a mixed-status relationship not just with intimate partners, but with other family members too.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterdiscip Perspect Infect Dis
October 2017
The concept of "serodiscordance" (mixed infection status) is primarily associated with epidemiological concerns about HIV transmission risk in couples. We make the case for extending this concept to include families with mixed HIV and viral hepatitis status. Social research on couples with mixed HIV and hepatitis C status has laid an important foundation for illuminating how experiences of serodiscordance within intimate partnerships are much broader than concerns about risk.
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