Anti-Racist Social Work with Older People

Work with older people is likely to become an increasingly significant area of practice given that the numbers of older people as a proportion of the world’s population are set to rise substantially in the next few decades, and their longer lifespan leads to growing demands for health and social care services that respond to their needs. Older people in general face a particular form of age oppression known as ageism and this intersects with ‘race’, ethnicity, gender, ability and other social divisions to produce complex and differentiated experiences of oppression among older people. This chapter explores these issues through case examples of work undertaken with black and white elders. Black and minority ethnic elders are under-represented in mainstream services, often being catered for by their own ethnic groups in welfare services established for such purposes. Another crucial question focuses on what mainstream service providers can learn from such provisions to make their services more attractive to black and minority ethnic (BME) elders and encourage these elders to access them.