Robin Means – författare

This new edition has been updated to reflect recent shifts in community and social care whilst still providing the authoritative account of its historical development. Particular attention is paid to partnerships between health and social care, the regulation of social care, direct payments and individual budgets and user/carer empowerment.

Older people in the countryside are vastly under-researched compared to those in urban areas. This innovative volume, the first project-based book in the New Dynamics of Ageing series, offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on this issue, focusing on older people’s role as assets in rural civic society. It demonstrates how the use of diverse methods from across disciplines aims to increase public engagement with this research. The authors examine the ways in which rural elders are connected to community and place, the contributions they make to family and neighbours, and the organisations and groups to which they belong. Highly topical issues around later life explored through these perspectives include older people’s financial security, leisure, access to services, transport and mobility, civic engagement and digital inclusion – all considered within the rural context in an era of fiscal austerity. In doing so, this book challenges problem-based views of ageing rural populations through considering barriers and facilitators to older people’s inclusion and opportunities for community participation in rural settings. Countryside Connections is a valuable text for students, researchers and practitioners with interests in rural ageing, civic engagement and interdisciplinary methods, theory and practice.

Recent community care changes have raised fundamental issues about the changing role of the public, voluntary and informal sectors in the provision of social care to older people. They have also raised issues about the health and social care interface, the extent to which services should be rationed and the respective roles of residential care and care at home.From Poor Law to community care sets these debates in the context of the historical growth of welfare services from the outbreak of the Second World War through to the establishment of social services departments in 1971. Based on extensive research on primary sources, such as the Public Records Office and interviews with key actors, the book considers the changing perceptions of the needs of elderly people, the extent to which they have been a priority for resources and the possibilities for a policy which combines respect for elderly people with an avoidance of the exploitation of relatives.This is an updated second edition of The development of welfare services for elderly people, first published by Croom Helm, 1985. It is essential reading for practitioners and policy makers interested in gerontology, policy studies, community care and postgraduate students studying and training in a range of health and social care related professions.