The elderly and quality in social services: standards, indicators, procedures and tools

Abstract

The paper presents an inventory of standards, indicators, procedures and tools that ensure the assessment and monitoring of quality in elderly-oriented social services and proposes a synthetic analysis of the concept of “elderly people” as reflected in documents specific to the field of social assistance. Data analysis follows the classic stages of content analysis: inventory of standards, indicators, procedures and tools; standardization of the information contained in the aforementioned quality standards, classification into units of analysis, establishment of the main categories of analysis, coding and final analysis of the data. The information obtained was broken down into three categories: senior citizens in specific roles, the elderly in the relational system, this age group in the dynamics of integration. Each category resulting from the analysis provides a specific picture of the life dimensions of institutionalized seniors. The main conclusion is that the intervention of social workers in a quality management system can be correlated with these resulting dimensions, and one can start from these indicators when it comes to the elaboration of intervention techniques and tools.