Research principles in social work for sustainable human in long-term care for older people

Abstract

The well-being of older people is the main goal of research on the needs of older people in social work. To ensure the autonomy and integrity of older people in need of care, the various helping professions must develop and apply ethically sensitive methodological approaches in research and in the development and implementation of practises today and in the future. In alienated systems of care, many people lose their humanity. As social work professionals, we need to understand philosophies of care and people’s daily lives from multiple perspectives. A comprehensive insight into the lives of older people is only possible if we use participatory dialog, respect people’s autonomy, and understand life on the planet as inseparable from all forms of the environment. Research, as the main human strategy to understand life, is a tool to get in touch with people’s everyday knowledge and inner wisdom, which are indispensable sources for creating an ecologically and socially sustainable human society. It discusses in an exploratory manner the development of the global aging and sustainable development agendas, the concepts of intergenerational solidarity and human needs, and discuss the principles of human needs research from a social work perspective.