The paper draws together two conceptualisations of resilience in bereavement and widowhood that were developed by Bonanno (2004) and Moore and Stratton (2003), both using North American data. This paper has re-examined data from two United Kingdom studies of widowerhood. Among an aggregate sample of 60 widowers, 38 per cent showed resilience in the face of the exacting challenges that late-life widowhood brings. Resilient men were seen as having a positively viewed biography, were participating in relationships and activities, and had returned to a life that had meaning and brought satisfaction. Four broad categories among the resilient widowers were identified. The first had been resilient consistently throughout their widowhood. The second group achieved resilience gradually, and the third following a turning point. Finally, a small group of men demonstrated both gradual and turning point pathways towards resilience. Personal characteristics had been particularly influential for those in the first group, while for the last group, social support had made an important contribution to achieving resilience and had two forms: informal and formal. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the differentiation of resilience for adaptation to bereavement amongst older men.

This paper is a contribution to the debate on how to make health-care services in the United Kingdom more responsive to the needs of older people who are members of recent immigrant groups. The focus is on the Chinese-origin elders, and the objective is to demonstrate their diverse migrant histories, cultural backgrounds and attitudes to both ‘traditional’ and Western health-care practices. The underlying argument is that if National Health Service staff had a better understanding of the diversity of Chinese older people, this would make an important contribution to making the service more sensitive to their needs. To develop this argument, this paper carries out three main analytical tasks. The first is to discuss the range of strategies adopted by Chinese people in general and Chinese older people in particular to improve their health. The second is to study Chinese people's heritage of exploring different methods to organise health in response to foreign culture. The third considers the ways in which the sensitivity of British health-care services to the needs of ethnic-minority groups can be improved, with a focus on the culturagram instrument and procedure. Three contrasting examples are presented.

This paper critically reflects upon policy and research definitions of elder mistreatment in light of the findings of the United Kingdom Study of Abuse and Neglect of Older People that was commissioned by Comic Relief with co-funding from the Department of Health. The study uniquely comprised a national survey and follow-up qualitative research with survey respondents. This paper focuses on the findings of the qualitative component. One focus is the idea of ‘expectation of trust’, with an argument being made that the concept needs clarification for different types of relationships. It is particularly important to distinguish between trust in affective relationships and ‘positions of trust’ (as of paid carers), and to articulate the concept in terms that engage with older people's experiences and that are meaningful for different relationship categories. The qualitative research also found that ascriptions of neglect and abuse tend to be over-inclusive, in some instances to avoid identifying institutional and service failures. We also question the role and relevance of the use of chronological age in the notion of ‘elder abuse’. Given that ‘abuse’, ‘neglect’ and ‘expectation of trust’ are ill-defined and contested concepts, we recommend that although consistent definitions are important, especially for research into the epidemiology and aetiology of the syndrome and for informed policy discussion, they will unavoidably be provisional and pragmatic.

In the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, the United Kingdom government set a ‘default’ retirement age of 65 years after which an employer can compulsorily retire workers, and made it obligatory for employers to consider the ‘business case’ for any employees' requests to continue in work after the default age. This is a ‘light touch’ approach to reducing age discrimination at the workplace and to changing the established ‘culture of retirement’. While encouraging productive staff to remain in post beyond 65 years of age, it leaves implementation of the policies and achievement of their goals to the discretion of employers. This article explores how British employers are adapting to the law, by drawing from interviews with 70 managers from a wide range of organisations. Overall the collected evidence shows the limits of a business case approach as a means of changing employers' practices. It was found that line managers, rather than senior managers or human resources specialists, generally decide which employees can stay employed after age 65 years. Consequently, the research suggests that opportunities for workers aged 65 or more years to stay employed are more the result of individual arrangements with their immediate managers than changes in an organisation's policies and practices. Altogether, the evidence suggests that consolidation rather than eradication of the established retirement culture has occurred.

The study compares the formal and informal social participation of 60–69 year olds in The Netherlands in 1992 and 2002, and examines which attributes of the two cohorts favour social participation. Using data from the Longitudinal Aging Study Amsterdam, it was found that cohort differences in formal participation (as members of organisations, in volunteer work and in religious organisations) and in informal participation (having a large social network, and in cultural and recreational activities) associated with cohort differences in individual characteristics (level of education, health, employment status and marital status). Descriptive analyses showed an increase between 1992 and 2002 in all forms of participation except religious involvement. The 2002 cohort members were more educated and more engaged in employment, but in worse health and had a higher prevalence of divorce than the 1992 cohort members. Logistic regression analyses showed that the positive effect on social participation of the recent cohort's higher educational level was suppressed by the negative effect of their worse health. Being divorced had mixed effects on formal and informal participation, but the difference in the number of divorcees did not explain cohort differences in social participation. Interaction effects showed that the influence of sex and health on volunteer work and religious involvement changed over time. The paper concludes with a discussion of the prospects for higher levels of formal and informal social participation among future cohorts of young-older people.

Payments for care, by which people in need of long-term care directly employ care workers, have been introduced in many European countries. In The Netherlands, care dependants are allowed to use these payments to hire relatives to perform care tasks. Care-givers who are employed by their relatives are in a hybrid position, because they are contracted as employees in the informal setting of a family home and its affective care relationships. This paper reports a qualitative study of relatives' experiences of payments for care and how these affect their care-giving. In-depth interviews were undertaken with 17 paid carers: they were asked to respond to three fictional vignettes of contrasting care trajectories. It was found that the cash nexus had mixed and partly contradictory implications for the paid care-givers. On the one hand, the care-givers were satisfied with the arrangement, as the payments recognised and raised their status as carers, and were seen as reward and reciprocation for their care work. Some carers had found that the contract helped manage strained relationships, by enabling a clearer differentiation of care tasks from affection. On the other hand, some who regarded themselves as employees and saw their role as equivalent to formal carers felt a greater obligation to provide high-quality care, and found that they were thanked less often and received fewer tokens of gratitude.

This study estimates the effect of increases in age on 16 health problems that affect paid work for men and women in the United Kingdom. The analysis is based on a sample of the United Kingdom household population from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey of 2007. Using multinomial logit regressions, the results reveal considerable diversity in the relationships between age and the reported prevalence of health problems that affect work. In particular, problems with heart, blood and circulation, arms and hands, legs and feet were strongly related to age, while difficulties in seeing and hearing, skin conditions and allergies appeared not to be more prevalent among older workers than younger employees. Regarding gender differences, it was found that, in general, women's health-related ability to participate in work was less affected by age, but that they suffered particular problems with arms and hands, skin conditions, allergies and depression. Finally, the study analyses the non-linear effects of unit increases in age. Such analysis may usefully identify the ages (or inflection points) at which ageing intensifies its effects on occupational health. These findings point to the importance of intervention at the appropriate time, when preventive measures may avoid the exacerbation of the health problem.

People with dementia are finding increasingly creative and diverse ways of making their voice heard in society and one such method is through the publication of autobiographical accounts. Following set inclusion criteria, this meta-ethnographic analysis compares and contrasts the contents of 12 books written by people with dementia and published between 1989 (the year of publication of the first text) and the end of 2007 (the selected cut-off point for inclusion). Of the 12 books, three authors were published twice, five were male, eight were from the United States of America, one was Australian and all nine had a professional background. Eight of the authors had Alzheimer's disease and one had fronto-temporal dementia. The average age of the narrator was 51.5 years (age range 38–61 years). Meta-ethnographic analysis of the 12 books inductively generated five themes that linked each story and these were: (a) awareness of change; (b) experiencing loss; (c) standing up and bearing witness; (d) sustaining continuity; and (e) liberation and death. The importance of reconstructing identity appeared a pivotal process in living with the onset and progression of dementia together with maintaining key social relationships and networks.

Concerns about the economic impact of an ageing population have triggered many developed countries to advance policies that attempt to extend working lives and discourage early retirement. There is considerable evidence of a relationship between poor health and early retirement, but some researchers have suggested that there is a ‘justification bias’ in claims that ill-health is the cause of retirement. This paper reports a longitudinal qualitative study that interviewed 60 New Zealanders aged between 55 and 70 years on two occasions, and analysed their explanations of health-related retirement decisions. Although the participants' explanations included poor health as an important reason for retirement, two additional health-related retirement pathways were identified: the ‘maximisation of life’, being decisions to retire whilst healthy to fulfil other life goals; and ‘health protection’, being decisions motivated by health protection and promotion. These health pathways interacted with other factors such as financial security. An elucidation of these motivations pays particular attention to the social and discursive context of explanations of retirement, and considers the three identified health-retirement pathways in relation to the sickness justification bias and current government policies to extend working lives.