Older people's relationship with care will change over the next 10 years as they will be wealthier and have higher expectations, a leading gerontologist has said.
Prof Eamon O'Shea, director of the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at NUI Galway, was speaking at a conference on caring and carers in Dublin yesterday. He also said he believed more people would be willing to be involved in caring for elderly and disabled relatives if there was more support for carers.
"I am not as pessimistic as many about people's willingness to care. I think they are quite willing but they want choice, they want support, they don't want to be working 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I think this is a critical issue for policymakers - how we structure and support care."
Although the numbers of people over the age of 65 as a proportion of the population had remained steady since the 1950s at about 11 per cent, "the real growth in older people is yet to come". Projections were that the proportion of the population over 65 would be 14.8 per cent in 2021 and 25.9 per cent in 2050.
Prof O'Shea told the conference, which was organised by the Caring for Carers organisation, that most of the public money aimed at caring for older people with some level of dependency was directed at hospitals and nursing homes and not to such services as home help.
"The few surveys there have been find most older people do not want to be dependent on their families. They do want family input, but they also want State support," said Prof O'Shea.
