Dependent old age, policies, quality of life

Abstract

An analysis of family health care policies is developed in the article. It is embedded wit- hin the change processes that are currently occurring. Those processes are related to demo- graphic, family, economic and social changes, and they affect the European countries as well as other developed societies. Currently, a common concern in those societies is how to deal with the changes that need to be made within the welfare systems, in order to impro- ve both economic and social development. Following such analysis, some research results and conclusions are presented. The research was carried out by the author in the Basque Country, Catalonia and Madrid, using qualitative methods. The topic, namely, family health care for frail elderly persons, has not been sufficiently studied in Spain. The pro- ject and research received several awards from prestigious Catalan institutions, and was partly funded by Fundación Caja de Madrid. One hundred in-depth interviews addres- sed to careers, and three semi-structured interviews addressed to relatives of Alzheimer’ Patients in the three regions were done.