Aging Related Resources

As a member of the advisory board for the National Center on Elder Abuse (NCEA), NASW encourages members to use NCEA resources. The mission of NCEA is to provide the latest information regarding research, training, best practices, news, and resources on elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation to professionals and the public. NCEA is a national resource center funded under Title II of the Older Americans Act and housed at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California (USC). Related USC resources include the USC Center on Elder Mistreatment and the Training Resources on Elder Abuse site.

As a member of the Eldercare Workforce Alliance (EWA), NASW played a central role in developing EWA’s recently released issue brief, End-of-Life Care: Preparing the Eldercare Workforce, published in March. Increasing the number of health care professionals specializing in geriatrics, gerontology, and palliative care will improve health care delivery as we age and at the end of life. Ensuring that the entire health care workforce understands the basic principles of these specialties will also improve care. Download the issue brief to learn about the role of the health care workforce serving older adults at the end of life.

In October 2017 NASW participated in the National Research Summit on Care, Services, and Supports for Persons with Dementia and Their Caregivers, held at the National Institutes of Health. The goal of the research summit was to identify what is known and needed to accelerate the development, evaluation, translation, implementation, and scaling up of comprehensive care, services, and supports for persons with dementia, families, and other caregivers. The summit focused on research that is needed to improve quality of care and outcomes across care settings, including quality of life and the lived experience of persons with dementia and their caregivers. Presenters included NASW members María Aranda, Elizabeth Gould, Darby Morhardt, and Sheryl Zimmerman.

NASW is among the stakeholder organizations that developed the National Blueprint: Achieving Quality Malnutrition Care for Older Adults, released in March 2017. This publication presents an overview of malnutrition among older adults and outlines strategies and tactics that various stakeholders, including social workers, can implement to prevent and care for older adult malnutrition in acute, post-acute, and community settings.

In many situations, social workers are the primary professionals assisting clients with advance directives.  Social workers in a variety of treatment settings may interact with clients or patients who have an advance directive or other documents related to health care proxy decision making or clients who would benefit from executing such a document or documents.  Social work assistance with advance care planning is common in aging, hospice, and palliative care settings and it is expanding to include mental health care settings.