With Innoclusion we evaluated innovative solutions that are necessary to provide good care for the elderly and support people with disabilities well. Overall, it is about a better inclusion, a better integration of vulnerable groups into our modern, performance oriented, sometimes streamlined societies.
Did this fit together? What we assumed turned out to be right: About 80 % of the needs of the two target groups and their carers and supporters are similar, even identical.
How could that be?
Firstly, we can state that aging is when it comes to its outcomes, that make any kind of care and support necessary, nothing else but the systematic and increasingly effective process of acquiring non-revisable disabilities.
Secondly, on the other hand, in Europe only 3% of disabilities are innate and some 90% are acquired.
Thirdly we see that there is no big difference in the effects on your quality of life, your social state, your ability to work etc. whether you are suffering hardly from dementia in an older age or from a likewise strong mental disability.
However, there is a difference at least concerning our (sub-liminal and conscious as well) perception of the situation whether you are young or old and suffering from disabilities: your life expectancy and with that the individual a/o societal aim for (re-) inclusion and that means often or mostly for integration into the labour market.
On closer inspection, this difference turns out to be more gradual than categorical. People with acquired disabilities can often be integrated into the primary labour market if the market and economic conditions allow. For people with severe physical or mental disabilities, this is rarely possible due to the disability itself.
It is not exactly the same for older people, but it is similar. It is not nominal age that is decisive, but biological age and thus the degree of preservation or impairment of mental and physical abilities, or the degree of disability acquired with and through ageing.
While support for disabled people is essentially aimed at enabling them to lead active, self-determined, and socially integrated lives, this is in fact rather the exception for elderly people in need of care. A rethink is needed here. Elderly care that is based on keeping people who are past their prime in as comfortable surroundings as possible is no longer the goal, or at least it should not be. Rather, the aim here is also to enable people to maintain their ability to lead active, self-determined and socially integrated lives for as long as possible – through active support. This is not very far from the concept of promoting autonomy and independence for people with disabilities.
For people with disabilities, as for elderly people, being productive is definitely a major desideratum. Beyond economic considerations, feeling that one is still useful is crucial for self-esteem in our culture. And especially in old age, it is not only longevity itself, but also the perceived quality of life that is determined by having a meaningful task in everyday life and thus being socially integrated.
Here, too, the overlap between the needs of the client groups – older people and people with disabilities – and the solution space opened up by innovations is considerably greater than one might generally assume.
Once again, we conclude that satisfying social and emotional needs — the need for social closeness and recognition — plays a decisive role in fostering a positive attitude towards life in both of our not-so-different target groups.
