Background: Social support received through different forms of help from members of one’s social network is an important element of coping with illness. In the case of illness, family members are the main providers of support, both within the same generation, but also, and increasingly so, between generations. This informal social support is related to socio-economic conditions of individuals: it is more common in lower economic and educational groups. Members of the middle generation, who help both the young and the old, are the main support providers. Also, female gender is the most significant predictor of the care burden. Withdrawing role of the welfare state in the postmodern society means shifting more responsibilities for care from the formal to informal sector. The aim of our study was to look into the characteristics of intergenerational support in illness in Slovenia. Methods: A cross-sectional study on personal support networks of the residents of Slovenia, sample size 5013, ata collection by computerassisted telephone interviews, respondents above 18 years of age. Multiple Classification Analysis (MCA) was used for data analysis to find out how much the dependent variable deviated from the mean as a result of a given respondent characteristic while controlling for the effects of all others. Results: The analysis showed the proportion of respondents’ social network that would provide support in the case of illness and could be defined as intergenerational network. Intergenerational ties represent about 35 % of the whole support netork in illness. The most frequent receivers are the youngest group of respondents (18–29), followed by the 60+ age group. Women receive more help than men, especially hose who are widows, living alone or living in multigenerational households. Intergenerational support is more frequent among the less educated respondents. Discussion: Our results comply with the findings in the literature, and are indicating that the actual trends in the changing structure and composition of the family, combined with less support from institutional health- and social care, is increasing the care burden of the informal carers within families. Conclussions: Health and social care policy and practice need awarness of the contextual factors of health care outcomes, taking into consideration social support networks’ functions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 28080601
Population ageing is the most outstanding feature of Slovene’s demographic development. A decreasing proportion of young people and an increasing proportion of old people in the overall population have been observed since the second decade of the 20th century. However, it should be noted that population ageing does not only affect the top and the bottom ends of the age pyramid; sooner or later, it also affects the potentially active population; for example, the labour force is also ageing. Changing proportions of active and dependent populations pose questions about quality of life for all population groups. For older people, for example, it is important to consider how their needs for care and social support may be met in the future. We start the paper with living arrangements of retired persons and a description of Slovenia and its demographic characteristics and continue with an exploration of social support networks of older people. In the final chapter we bring together both topics and try to evaluate social support network types with regard to the capacity of such network types to provide care for older people and demographic development in the future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 30657373
This paper has its roots in the theoretical definition of the term community education and its role at encouraging intergenerational learning and education. The paradigms of intergenerational learning are changing due to the demographic, social and economic changes. Alongside the traditional exchange of knowledge and experience within families, it is now spreading into community learning, which means that it is still taking place between generations, but outside of the family circle. On the basis of these premises we followed the thesis that cooperation between various age groups depends on how their position is perceived, their social identities and willingness for mutual cooperation, as well as on certain external factors that encourage and direct the cooperation. We wished to know to what extent was this reciprocity established, how do the interviewees experience it and what are they willing to contribute in order to achieve greater intergeneration solidarity. We evaluated our hypotheses by using the case study method.
COBISS.SI-ID: 45737058