Ethics In Community-Based Elder Care

Caring for elders outside of institutions is the fastest growing sector of US health care. Building on their research study at the Park Ridge Center, editors Holstein and Mitzen, together with a team of experts, examine the complexities involved in developing an ethics for community-based long-term care. They also challenge policymakers to make home care a more viable option for older people in need. Chapters address many of the ethical and practical problems that arise in the care of older people with physical and mental disabilities--including how to allocate scarce funds, how to keep good caregivers, how to balance concerns of autonomy, risk and safety, and worker stress. The volume is an excellent resource for practitioners, policymakers, and students.

Martha B. Holstein, PhD, is an Associate for Research at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics in Chicago, where her focus is applied ethics in health care and other settings. She holds a PhD from the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch and was formerly on the staff of the Hastings Center, Associate Director of the American Society of Aging, and a planner for the San Francisco Commission on Aging. For much of her work life, she has been interested in the bridge between theory and practice; for the past fifteen years this effort has focused on ethics, especially in the area of aging. She has been involved in aging-related issues since 1973 and believes that "doing" ethics is an evolving skill that starts from one's values and stance in the world but does not end there. She also believes that ethical analysis is an engaged enterprise; to try to affect background conditions that help create many problems is the task of the ethicist as citizen. Dr. Holstein writes, teaches, lectures, and conducts training on the subject of ethics and aging.

Phyllis Mitzen, ACSW, LCSW, received her MA from the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. She has been at the Council for Jewish Elderly since 1980, where she is currently Director of Development. In her prior role at CJE she managed community-based home-care programs which led her in 1984 to initiate a community ethics committee at CJE. In the 1990's, she chaired the advisory committee to Illinois' community Care Program as it incorporated client-centered concepts into the sate run program. The Ethics in Home-Care Project emerged from this work. She has always believed that the problems in home care are too complex and too numerous to be left only to agencies and the state, but that they require reflection by individuals. She has promoted these ideas while serving on home-care boards and commissions. She has written articles, book chapters and has made numerous local, national and international presentations on this topic. In 1995, she was a delegate to the White House Conference on Aging.