Age-old problem
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| Professor Helen Bartlett, Director of UQ’s Australasian Centre on Ageing (ACA) |
Researchers are racing the clock to prepare Australia for a population of one in four people aged more than 65 by 2050.
The ageing of the baby boomer generation is already impacting on the country’s demographics, with 13 percent of people now 65 or older, a figure which will rise to 19 percent in the next 20 years.
Professor Helen Bartlett, the Director of UQ’s Australasian Centre on Ageing (ACA) said age-related research at UQ was increasingly cross-disciplinary and attracting more PhD students.
She said there were many new research collaborations between UQ Schools and the ACA as well as with all levels of government, industry and community organisations.
Associate Professor Jill Wilson, Head of the UQ School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences and research associate with the ACA, is collaborating with Queensland Health to explore the relationship between staff communication at residential aged care facilities and the quality of care.
Dr Wilson is also part of a UQ research team developing a project to assist older people and those who help them manage their financial affairs.
The researchers from the School of Social Work and Applied Human Sciences and the TC Beirne School of Law have conducted a pilot of the project at Redcliffe in Brisbane.
“One in four adult Australians provide assistance with asset management for an older adult. Our project will explore what is needed to ensure these types of activities are handled well.” Dr Wilson said.
The ACA is also working in partnership with the National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre (NSPAC) to develop policy responses to facilitate productive and healthy ageing.
The multi-stage research project by Dr Jeni Warburton from the ACA and Dr Susan Dann from the NSPAC is looking at volunteering as a dimension of productive ageing.
Meanwhile, researchers at UQ’s School of Psychology have developed a Social Vulnerability Scale (SVS) to assess the likelihood of an older person being exploited.
PhD student Donna Pinsker said older people had been stereotyped as representing an easy target for fraud.
“Our scale looks at people’s actual behaviour in everyday life and can be used to identify people who may be socially vulnerable, which is an important indicator of exploitation,” Ms Pinsker said.
ACA researcher Dr Mair Underwood believes society’s determination to postpone the signs of ageing could result in the current older generation being the last to “age gracefully.”
Dr Underwood’s PhD study of how people of different ages feel about and understand their bodies showed that baby boomers were at the forefront of the “anti-ageing” movement.
“If the appearance of ageing is starting to be thought of as a choice, how will those who look old be regarded? Will they be considered failures?” she said.
In another initiative, UQ has joined with aged care provider Blue Nursing in the $1.5 million UQ–Blue Care Research and Practice Development Centre, which opened in May.
- FUNDING Aged Care Qld Inc.; Australian Research Council; Blue Care; National Seniors Productive Ageing Centre; Queensland Government; Tricare
- EMAIL aca@uq.edu.au
- WEB LINK www.uq.edu.au/cfha
