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The concept of welfare technology in Swedish municipal eldercare

FRENNERT, Susanne
BAUDIN, Katarina
September 2019

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Purpose: An ageing population presents a challenge for municipal eldercare in Sweden due to difficulties recruiting staff and there being a strained economy. A strategy involving welfare technology is presented as one such solution. An important group to carry out this strategy involves those who work with welfare technology in municipal eldercare. In this paper we describe their perception of welfare technology, and the challenges and opportunities they perceive in utilizing it.

 

Methods: A self-administered online questionnaire was distributed to all Swedish municipalities and answered by 393 respondents. Analyses show that the respondents were representative of the different professions who work with welfare technology within municipal eldercare.

 

Results: Welfare technology was perceived as being more reliable and safer than humans with regards to supervisions and reminders. The respondents acknowledged factors that slowed down the implementation of welfare technology in municipal eldercare organizations, such as resistance to change, lack of finances, lack of supporting evidence, lack of infrastructure, high staff turnover, difficulties with procurement and uncertainties about responsibility and laws.

 

Conclusions: We found that the people who work with and make decisions about welfare technology in municipal eldercare organizations were generally very positive about the deployment and use of such technology, but there appear to be problems within municipal eldercare organizations to realize this vision. The lack of structured implementation processes and coherent evaluation models indicates inequality of the access to welfare technology and, as a result, even though Swedish eldercare is publicly funded, the availability of welfare technologies and their usage differ between municipalities.

Representation, access and contestation: Facebook and vision impairment in Jordan, India, and Peru

PAL, Joyojeet
ALFARO, Ana Maria Huaita
AMMARI, Tawfiq W
CHHABRA, Sidharth
LAKSHMANAN, Meera
2015

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This paper presents qualitative research on the use of Facebook by visually impaired people and organizations representing them in Jordan, Peru, and India. We found that individuals and organizations have very different motivations and pathways for using social media. Social media serve as a means to help individuals with vision impairments to expand their social circles, network with casual acquaintances, and find various kinds of social and technical resources independently. However on issues of representation we found that social media have the potential to play a double-edged sword, reinforcing in some cases the same stereotypes that individual users of assistive technology (AT) sought to overcome by using technology in their professional lives. We find that individuals often characterize social media and assistive technology in the same vein — suggesting that for many parts of the global South, the dramatic change in the means and ability to leverage social and professional possibilities has not come from any one technology alone, but from a broader evolution of the technological environment available to people with vision impairments. Access to social media and technology disrupt an environment in which social and economic spaces for people with disabilities are still a zone of contestation between a dominant discourse of vision impairment enforced by generations of negative representations of disability, and a new world of technology users challenging representations and assumptions as engaged, connected professionals.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 3

Where can design have the greatest impact in the next five years?

CASEY, Valerie
Ed
April 2014

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This special 100th journal issue focuses on women, design and social impact. The concept of "Design for all" is that the starting point should be the needs of people with activity limitation, such as physical, sensory and mental or cognitive limitation, and spaces, buildings and products should be designed to be accessible to all without losing the aesthetic or adding to cost.

The Journal contains 10 short essays by designers addressing issues such as: the need to assess the requirements of users first; exploring the political and social aspects of design; the responsibilities of designers; design as a problem solving tool;design to improve the lives of the poorest; sustainability; development; technology; and the environment

Design For All Journal​, Vol 9, No 4 

Perspectives on disability, poverty and technology : a report to Healthlink Worldwide and GIC Ltd

ALBERT, Bill
MCBRIDE, Rob
SEDDON, David
September 2002

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This paper sets out an approach to disability and development based on the social model of disability. It states that national and international statistics on the incidence of physical and/or mental impairment provides a partial and often misleading notion of the social reality of disability in developing countries. They should therefore not be used to gauge the needs of disabled people or to estimate the costs or benefits of programmes. The paper argues for the need to formulate an integrated strategy towards disability and development. It recommends that specific criteria be adopted for judging project concept notes and proposals and makes recommendations regarding the choice and weighting of criteria. It also provides a set of recommendations for: DFID in general; DFID in relation to its Disability Knowledge and Research (KaR) programme; the Disability KaR programme managers; further work to be undertaken

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