The primary interest of this article is to understand the organisation of community care in Slovenia. There are several differences at the local level regarding how the formal care of the older people is organised (e.g. the existence of social home care services) and to what extent other services have developed (e.g. institutional care for the older people, intergenerational centres, community nursing, NGOs and interpersonal assistance). We focus on two services, institutional care and social home care, and present the typology of community care in Slovenia. Four clusters were obtained via a hierarchical method (k-means clustering). Clusters of municipalities are comprised of municipalities that have similar characteristics of care for older people, taking into account both institutional care and social home care. The results have shown that municipalities in Slovenia differ dramatically in the availability of care for the older people. Some offer only a poor quality of care (mainly smaller rural municipalities), while others offer higher quality of care and a strong combination of both institutional and social home care.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32715869
This paper discusses evaluation in care homes, with a focus on participative evaluation, which specifically aims to empower people through participation, the development of valid local knowledge and further changes in the organisational culture in care homes. After an overview of various methods generally used to assess the quality of services in care homes, we use the model of participative evaluation as a yardstick against which to examine the quality of the evaluation practices among Slovenian care homes. Firstly, a survey among managers revealed various types of evaluation used and the fact that nearly all homes use it. Secondly, in DSO Fužine (chosen as a case study), a qualitative study was performed by placing the "evaluation practice" into the local frame of awareness and by means of a focus group of residents, aiming to identify residents' perceptions of the power of their voice regarding the daily life in home, regarding various power instances and the role of evaluation practice. The overall perception of residents was they have a fair control over life in the home, a form of "direct democracy"; while these findings cannot be generalised to all homes, they certainly represent a surprising extra quality in comparison to the present "outside world" of the currently troubled Slovenian society.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32716637
Theory. Social homecare is important for older people, as it enables them to remain in their own homes during worsening health, thus relieving the burden on institutional facilities such as homes for the elderly or nursing homes and hospitals. Method. A representative survey of social homecare users was employed to assess determinants of the scope of social homecare in Slovenia. Multiple regression analysis was used to evaluate determinants defined by Andersen's behavioral model that affect the scope of social homecare. Results. As expected, need (Functional impairment B = .378, P = 0.000) was the most important explanatory component, followed by availability of informal care network (Lives alone B = -.136, P = 0.000; Has children B = - .142; P = 0.000) and other contextual factors such as total costs of the services (B = -.075; P = 0.003) and temporal availability of services (B=-.075, P=0.012). The model explained 18% of variability in the scope of social homecare. Conclusion. This study showed that data on the individual level, as opposed to data on an aggregated level, show different determinants of social homecare utilization. Moreover, the results showed that social homecare is especially important in two circumstances: when older people have a high level of need and when they do not have access to informal care networks. Contextual factors had a moderate effect on the scope of social homecare, which shows universal access to the latter at the individual level.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32963677
Modern society is occupied with the problem of decreasing civic engagement - an important civic virtue. In this context, higher educational institutions are important settings where participation can be learned and fostered. This article seeks to emphasize the importance of spatial organisation in higher education institutions in influencing youth participation. Namely, spatial organisation can foster or hinder civic virtues, such as civic participation and interpersonal trust. In an explorative case study of two universities, the University of Ljubljana and Tokyo Metropolitan University, we wish to illustrate the importance of place in stimulating participation. In our analysis of examples of spatial organisation from the two universities, we pay special attention to the following elements: physical organisation (e.g., building design, design of public spaces) and social/functional organisation (e.g., commercial facilities, recreational facilities). The result is a set of spatial maps indicating the frequency and nature of the use of (public) spaces. To conclude, we discuss spatial characteristics in the context of the increasing consumerism and privatisation of (public) spaces within universities.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33122141
In this article the author investigates paid domestic work in Slovenia to obtain information on domestic workers' perceptions of their work. Cleaning up after other people is usually considered dirty work with a stigma attached to it. Given this, we draw on indepth interviews with paid domestic workers to examine how they deal with society's negative perceptions and potential individual strategies for coping with a stigmatised social identity. On the basis of previous research on paid domestic work it was assumed that employment relationships are arranged in such a way (because of the location, domesticity, informal management - all in a relatively traditional and constraining gendered order) that those employed as domestic workers do feel stigma, but we also assume (based on many studies on dirty work) that housecleaners share a relatively high level of self-respect and pride with other dirty workers. The results show that stigma intrudes into the social interactions between paid domestic workers and their employers, leading housecleaners to seek different strategies to cope with it. At the same time, respondents' descriptions of their work and work relations reveal positive aspects of the job and thus shed light on the complexity of cleaners' work and their employment relationships within the confines of the private domestic space.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32989277