Personalized Social Care for Older Adults

Personalized social care for older adults encompasses a spectrum of approaches that place individuals at the centre of care planning, funding and delivery. By calibrating services to the unique preferences, cultural backgrounds and support networks of older people, this model seeks to promote autonomy, dignity and social participation. Key components include individual budgets or direct funding mechanisms, personal assistants recruited and managed by care recipients, and choice models that allow older adults to select from a range of providers. Advances in digital technologies, outcome monitoring and workforce training are enabling more responsive and flexible care arrangements. Nonetheless, challenges remain in ensuring equity of access, supporting informal carers and embedding safeguards to maintain quality and financial sustainability. Globally, personalised care is recognised as a means to address demographic ageing, to reduce institutionalisation and to foster better alignment between policy ambitions and lived experiences of later life.

Research from Nature Portfolio

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Personalized Social Care for Older Adults publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in personalized social care for older adults across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Direct payments: Cash allocations provided to care recipients or their representatives to purchase and organise social care services independently of local authority scheduling.

Personalisation: The tailoring of social care services to individual needs, preferences and circumstances, often involving flexible funding and user-controlled decision-making.

Consumer choice model: An organisational framework in which service users select from a range of approved providers, intended to foster competition, innovation and user empowerment in long-term care.

Directly-funded home care: A form of care financing whereby government funds are dispensed directly to clients, who then coordinate their own home support, either via agencies or independent workers.

References

1. Influences of service characteristics and older people’s attributes on outcomes from direct payments. BMC Geriatrics (2021).
2. Choice models in Nordic long-term care: care managers' experiences of privilege and disadvantage among older adults. European Journal of Ageing (2022).
3. Inequities in access to directly-funded home care in Canada: a privilege only afforded to some. BMC Health Services Research (2023).