Day 13

I am almost done transcribing the fourth FGD, which means that after this I only have one more to transcribe and I am essentially done (barring needing to look through the transcripts again for formatting and checking the two that I need to just check the notes for). It's quite exciting knowing that I am almost done with one of the tasks for this placement, and on time as well (given how this needs to be done by end May). There is a sense of accomplishment and excitement as I begin to move on to the next phase of tasks - and as the entire review begins to take shape (as I do the analysis and literature review). I will however need to figure out how the review should be structured, as the literature review does still revolve around the effectiveness of counselling for elderly (and the population in general) whereas the themes in the FGD revolve around client awareness and the need for public education about what counselling entails as well as how it can help people. Constructing the implications from both these areas of the review will be interesting as both are so different and call for different actions to be put in place - which might mean choosing one over the other, should budget be an issue.

I attended the SDD talk, and that was interesting as I got to hear about the statistics to do with the elderly - both current and projected statistics. The statistics are quite enlightening in terms of how the ageing population is going to affect us in the future, both as a nation and within the social service sector itself. I suspect that the degree of impact is a lot less than what the government has projected currently, just because in the past the government has stated that enough was being done to help elder/target the ageing population - something anyone in the social service sector would have serious doubts about. Particularly after hearing about the sheer numbers we are going to have to deal with, we might have difficulty coping with problems like dementia and depression in the future. This might not so much be due to an increase in prevalence of the disease (as in it's affecting a greater majority of people - which would then need us to examine why it was becoming more prevalent) but just the sheer number of people having it increasing, because of the baby boomers ageing.

Again this makes me think about the future generation of elders - those from my mother's generation, and what type of services and programmes they would need. With a rising number getting divorced and having fewer children to support them, apart from their possible need for financial support, there will be greater need for their socio-emotional needs to be met. This could be done through counselling, through more activities being organised by the CCs and RCs and SACs, and by roping in religious organisations to help "keep them occupied". Whether the future generation of seniors would actually use these programmes however remains to be seen, particularly as they would be more educated and thus the current programmes might not be suited to their needs/wants in terms of how to occupy their time.

This provision of more programmes to meet the demand by the growing number of seniors would also mean a need for more manpower to help run these programmes - and as it is there are insufficient people going into the older adults sector, with most preferring to work with youth and children. Somehow I feel that this is due to our stereotype about what working with the elderly entails - amongst which includes the necessity to know dialects and mandarin. While this will still be important in the future, I suspect that the future generation of elderly will be more well-versed in English, given how most of them were educated in English schools. As such there is a need for us to revise our idea of what work in the older adults sector entails, to keep up with the times and attract new blood to the sector. If we package it in such a way as to show budding social workers (and people from related disciplines) that the work would be challenging and would require a lot of creativity (as they think of new, interesting, and relevant programmes), this could help to somehow draw more people in. Suffice to say we need to make the sector look dynamic and interesting, comparable to working with youth.

Gerontology was another topic that was featured during the talk, and I studied social gerontology in school. It was quite interesting learning social gerontology, particularly learning about the typical stereotypes regarding the elderly/older adults. A lot of these stereotypes have to do with the primary and secondary characteristics of aging, with the stereotypes arising mainly from the secondary characteristics being mistaken for primary characteristics. For example, a lot of people believe that dementia is a "normal" aging process, or that majority of the population gets it. While dementia is linked to genetics, it is not as prevalent as everyone thinks. However it still is a serious problem, and in sheer numbers alone it is going to increase a lot in the next few years. Thus there is a need to educate people on how to detect early warning signs of dementia so they can get the proper medical care and slow down the process, yet also emphasise that it is not a normal aging process. We also need to educate the younger generation to a) learn how to look for early warning signs of dementia in their parents, b) learn how to care for their parents who have dementia (or make preparations for their care), and c) how to prepare for it themselves - in terms of learning how to stave off dementia.

The issue here is that there is a fine line to tread between causing mass hysterics (i.e. everyone thinking they will get dementia) and breeding ignorance (i.e. not knowing the signs of dementia and living in denial about it). This is especially more difficult if the younger generation is not interested in learning about the illness, or sees no need to (because they think that it is so far away from affecting them, either directly or indirectly). We need to somehow breed curiosity and concern in the younger ones to want to learn about this process, how it could affect their parents (and thus indirectly them), how it could affect them directly, and try to get them out of an apathetic state (or the sense of invulnerability that youth seems to bring) and into a "knowing" and caring state.