The School of Social Welfare’s Center for Aging Policy Research convened a roundtable at Stony Brook University’s Southampton Campus October 17-19, 2012. The topic was: Aging-in-Place and Unpaid Care Giving: Toward the Development of Aging Friendly Communities through the Re-organization of Funding Streams, Services, and Workforce.
Distinguished researchers, policy analysts, government agency administrators, not-for–profit executives, church leaders, advocacy organizations, and community residents including participants from China, Germany, Sweden and the United States spent three days presenting and discussing papers and sharing ideas in an effort to find solutions to the universal needs of aging populations.
Research has shown that a very large older population that desires to “age-in-place” has begun to retire. Within 10 years of retirement, half of this population will face chronic conditions that will account for a very large proportion of total healthcare expenditures. This population, moreover, will receive most of its care in the community, at home, facilitated by unpaid caregivers.
This has set in motion the beginning of a shift from institutional to community-based care that is causing researchers, policy analysts, providers and public policy decision makers to explore ways to transform incoherent funding streams, fragmented services and an inadequate direct care workforce into an integrated health and social care delivery system that is consumer-centered, home and community-based, and supportive of unpaid care givers.
The Proceeding of the Stony Brook Southampton Roundtable will be published and a video of the roundtable will be produced and available online and in CD format.
The University of Mannheim, Germany, will host a follow up to the Stony Brook Southampton Roundtable on Aging as part of the European Gerontological Association Annual meeting in May 2013 in Mannheim.
Frances L. Brisbane, dean of the School of Social Welfare and Harvey A. Farberman, director of the Center for Aging Policy Research, have been invited to China Youth University for Political Studies in Beijing to further develop collaborative aging initiatives with the Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare.
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