Ageing Population: Challenge for New Quality of Social Policy

Abstract

As a share of older people in the whole population is continuously growing all over the world, policy makers face new challenges of tailoring social policy to the needs of older generation. To this end, the team of International Scientific-Educational Laboratory for the Improvement of Wellbeing Technologies of Older Adults of Tomsk Polytechnic University has organized two expert seminars with the participation of older people and social workers and officials. The feedback from the expert groups has revealed the importance of the state support of older generation in terms of providing the adequate pension rates, free and timely access to medical help and cultural events. Another crucial problem pronounced by social workers was a lack of informal (family) support or its ambiguity when it comes to older adults’ benefits eligibility assessment. The results of expert seminars allowed making up a set of recommendations for a legislative body of Tomsk region.