Ageing of the population and home care services

From a demographical perspective, ageing of a population is defined as an increase in theproportion of elderly people within total population. In physiological terms, it is pointed out that ageing isconsidered to be an inevitable case and the risk of incompetence and diseases increases with age, whichdecreases quality of life dramatically. Although there are a great number of factors that affect ageing ofpopulation, it is reported that especially the decrease in fertility and an increase in life expectancy at birthare influential. As a result of ageing, some health problems related to old age and a need for care emergeand this case resulted in a tendency towards home care services in particular while organizing healthservices. From the perspective of the elderly, it is seen that in general they want to stay in their ownenvironment, receive the needed care at their own homes and tend to decide in this way. Home-careservice is defined to be a caring model which includes psycho-social, physiologic, and medical supportservices and social services. It aims to help the disabled, elderly and chronically ill to adapt to social lifein their own environment. It is of great importance to adopt a holistic approach in terms of physical,emotional, psychological, moral, and socio-cultural aspects while providing the elderly with the neededhealth service without taking them away from their own environments. This results in the need for anorganisation of health services for the elderly and regulations to create an effective geriatric healthmanagement.This study elaborates on some topics including ageing of population, which is a modern problem of ourage, health problems related to old age, life quality of the elderly, health services to be provided duringold age, and organizing home care services etc. while mentioning national and international regulationson home care services. It is thought that covering a problem that is of great interest to any society and theregulations on home care services will provide a perspective to future researchers on this subject.

Keywords:

Ageing , old age , protective health services , home care services