THE SPENDING PATTERNS OF THE OLD-AGE PENSION BY THE FRAIL ELDERLY

Authors

  • Herman Strydom School of Psycho-social Behavioural Sciences: Division Social Work, Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.
  • Corinne Strydom School of Psycho-social Behavioural Sciences: Division Social Work, Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15270/45-3-202

Abstract

A specific old-age home in a semi-urban area of South Africa delivers certain communityoutreach services besides the services to the inmates of the old-age home. A team of registerednurses have been delivering these home-care services since 2002, including physical care, ameal service and a transport service to clinics and hospitals. The profile of the elderly personsliving in this specific community shows that they are mostly women, black and very poor.While rendering services to the aged persons in the community, staff members realised thatespecially the frail aged have very little finances to spend on their own keeping, although theyall receive an old-age pension. This raised the question of possible neglect and financial abuseby their caregivers and other people, which in turn led to this specific research project. Thisarticle reports on an attempt to investigate the housing circumstances and the financial positionof the participants, as well as determining whether they could account for their expenditure, theitems that the pension was spent on, the point of payment of the pension, the accompanyingperson and the manner in which withdrawal of money took place. Furthermore, theinvestigation included whether participants cared for children, topics of interest forgrandparents caring for children, and the physical appearance of participants

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Published

2014-06-18

How to Cite

Strydom, H., & Strydom, C. (2014). THE SPENDING PATTERNS OF THE OLD-AGE PENSION BY THE FRAIL ELDERLY. Social Work/Maatskaplike Werk, 45(3). https://doi.org/10.15270/45-3-202

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