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/lp/springer-publishing/the-family-and-services-03shDb6wgd
- Publisher
- Springer Publishing
- ISSN
- 0198-8794
- eISSN
- 1944-4036
- DOI
- 10.1891/0198-8794.1.1.370
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
By the 1970s the myth that families abandon their elderly had been dis- spelled, and this became the decade for the discovery of the family as a resource for its elderly. Whereas "alternatives to institutional care" was the rhetoric of the early 1970s, the lingua franca that emerged by the late 1970s was that of family and natural supports. Witness, for example, the attention to natural supports in the report of the President's Corn- mission on Mental HeaIth ( 1978 ) and the guidelines for the Model Projects an Aging Program {1978), which focus on community and family sup- ports. Although natural or community supports other than the family may be important in the lives of the aging, it is the family that bears the burden of care-giving when the older person is in crisis or becomes incapacitated. Even when an elderly member becomes institutionalized, the family pm- vides meaningful support. How famiIies function in reIation to service needs of its eldest members is to be discussed in this chapter. To sort out the research related to family and services, four topics will be considered: the family as resource, caregiving by families to im- paired members, the family and
Journal
Annual Review of Gerontology & Geriatrics – Springer Publishing
Published: Sep 1, 1980