Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century Issues and Challenges for Culturally Competent Research and Practice

Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century: Issues and Challenges for Culturally Competent Research and Practice will help social workers, researchers, and organizations identify and analyze ways of meeting the demands of the increasing number of elderly Latinos. Working from conceptual frameworks, case studies, and examples, this book provides you with a demographic picture of Latino elders and investigates the needs of ethnic-specific groups. Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century will help you develop and create culturally competent intervention methods that take the culture, beliefs, and situations of Latino elders into consideration.

Addressing the future challenges to individuals involved in the field of gerontology, this book offers you current studies on the assessment of present services for Latino elders, how they can be improved, and why these individuals may be reluctant to seek financial or medical help. Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century will assist you in devising policies and programs aimed at improving services for Latino elders, including:

• providing Latino and non-Latino staff with an understanding of culturally competent principles, such as values, knowledge, and skills, that will help them give attention to individual and cultural needs
  
• improving staff development by assessing issues and underlying causes of client problems
  
• using the self and other cultural awareness models to help professionals realize their own values, attitudes, and behaviors
  
• examining community resources, such as gift shops, clothing shops, and beauty parlors in Puerto Rican communities that offer interpreter services, integration of the lonely, and community leadership to the elderly
  
• considering family structure and personal identification to facilitate access to health care services
  
• minimizing stress of caregivers by fully understanding how they identify their roles within their families, evaluating their needs and capacity as caregivers, and offering counseling approaches that recognize the dynamics of caregiving
  
• examining contributing factors to substance abuse among elders and researching incidence, prevalence, patterns of use, etiology, and consequences of this behavior
  
  Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century explores the possibilities of further research in the areas of substance abuse among the elderly and the importance of businesses in ethnic communities to meet the growing needs of clients. In order to assist specific groups of Latinos, this book examines social and medical needs and services for Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, and Yaqui elders of Old Pascua. Latino Elders and the Twenty-First Century will help you develop culturally sensitive programs for individual clients and diminish barriers to service.