Abstract
In the early 1990s, Ukraine had inherited the Soviet paternalistic model of social welfare with limited care institutions and absence of professional social work. Since that time, the new services for older people have been gradually introduced and currently three models of social care for the elderly co-exst in Ukraine: inpatient (residential), semi-residential, and non-residential. However, older people experience a lot of social problems and the Ukrainian system of elderly care is far from being perfect, lacking respect for human dignity to its clients.
The chapter reviews the key features of the Ukrainian model of elderly care built up from 1990 to 2020 and the peculiarities of modern social work with older people with regard to the processes of decentralization, marketization, and fragmentation of social services. It reflects country’s controversial experience of balancing the indigenous social patterns of paternalism and empowering strategies introduced by international organizations. The response of the Ukrainian elderly care system to COVID-19 was seriously determined by deeply rooted paternalism and expectation for the top-down regulations.
The chapter ends with a set of recommendations regarding enchancing social work with older people. The issues of the transformation of an ineffective system of elderly care are brought up regarding inclusive practices and community development proposed by the international organisations.
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Semigina, T., Karkach, A. (2022). Elderly Care in Greying Ukraine: Challenges and Prospective. In: Baikady, R., Sajid, S., Przeperski, J., Nadesan, V., Islam, M.R., Gao, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68127-2_297-1
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