Social isolation and loneliness are reported as having significant impacts on health, especially for older people. Policy concern has led to the creation of interventions to try and tackle these issues, including the funding of community-based support groups. The National Lottery Ageing Better Fund, 2015-2022 supported voluntary and community…

This study describes the social support network of older adults enrolled in the Open University for Senior Citizens at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities, University of Sao Paulo. A cross-sectional study was conducted with a sample of 117 elderly or older adults, mostly female (78%), married (53%), retired (82%), and aged on average…

Background: In recent years, more and more secondary schools in Hong Kong begin to employ service learning in designing student learning activities. A vast majority of these attempts is developed based on the philanthropic ideas of altruism, love and care; it involves serving elderly people living in the elderly homes far away from the school…

Aunts and uncles play special roles in the lives and education of nieces and nephews. They are among the first adults children meet other than parents and grandparents. They are often willing and able to fulfill roles that strengthen the relationship with a niece or nephew, especially if they have never married. The roots of the relationship,…

Interviewed 53 noninstitutionalized elderly to examine patterns of exchange of assistance within their informal helping networks. Results suggest inability to reciprocate rather than need for assistance had a greater negative effect on morale. There was a negative relationship between formal service use and reliance on the informal network.…

Assessed care afforded the elderly through informal support networks, particularly their families, as opposed to formal services. Focused on strain experienced by primary caregivers, who tended to be women. Analyzed instrumental aid (tangible aid and service referral) and expressive support given by role models and confidants who provided a form…

Compared the neighbor support given to 226 widows who were categorized into three groups: those who had one or more children in the same city, those who had children who resided elsewhere, and those who were childless. Multivariate analyses revealed differences between these groups on various measures of neighbor support. (Author/NRB)

The elderly have generally been portrayed as needy recipients of services; only recently has attention been paid to their contributory role. To explore the nature and characteristics of helping behavior among urban elderly, 117 residents of senior citizens' housing sites in Detroit completed the Altruism Scale for the Elderly and a second measure…

Studied relative importance of family, friends, neighbors, and others in support networks of elderly persons. Data from interviews with 1,284 elderly respondents in Winnipeg, Manitoba offer limited support for hierarchical compensatory model which contends that kin, particularly spouse and children, are of primary importance, followed by friends,…

This booklet is designed to assist those who are responsible for coordinating and monitoring from a distance the care of an aging relative. It provides help in identifying problem areas and possible resources for support. It also provides information about creating a network of assistance that includes family, friends, neighbors, and social…

Trained healthy, elderly residents of retirement community in facilitative communication skills. Tested before and after training were 12 residents who revealed significant increase in self-perceptions of helpfulness. Also found significant increase in abilities to discriminate between helpful and unhelpful ways of responding to people with…

Surveyed 67 neighbors in retirement housing to identify characteristics and helping styles within an informal support system. Findings confirmed three exchange types: (1) high helpers, who exhibit a quasiprofessional style; (2) mutual helpers, who show an interdependent style; and (3) neighborhood isolates, whose social ties are outside the…

Constructed a path model to examine the factors that elicit and sustain helping behavior in 148 adult children with elderly mothers. Field survey data indicated that present helping behaviors, attachment behaviors, and feelings of attachment had the strongest influence on commitment to provide future help. (JAC)

Ways to alleviate the stresses of providing care for elderly relatives include corporate-sponsored assistance programs, informal respite care, a parent care system, nonkin back-up system, support services for the care recipient, and cognitive restructuring. (SK)

Although the support network of elderly individuals has received increased attention recently, most research has focused on the parent child relationship without examining other levels of kin interrelations. To examine the help received by rural-transitional older adults from their consanguineous kin (adult children, grandchildren, siblings,…