Barriers to Accessing Care and Support Services for Older Immigrants and Immigrants with Dementia in Finland: Perspectives of Professional Social and Health Care Providers.

Abstract

Older people's immigration to a different country can place them in a vulnerable situation. Research on the legal rights and access to justice for older immigrants and immigrants with dementia seeking care and support is scarce in Finland. This study addresses this gap in the research and employs semi-structured qualitative interviews with professionals offering services to this target group. Inductive and deductive qualitative content analysis approaches were used to analyze the data. The themes created from the data were analyzed from the perspective of an Elder Law theory, namely, Doron's Multidimensional Model of Elder Law. According to the findings of this study, the major challenges to accessing care and support include linguistic barriers, lack of digital skills, lack of information and knowledge, loneliness, and cultural differences. Some of the strategies that can be adopted to address these challenges include developing culturally sensitive services, dissemination of information about the available services in different languages and employing more bilingual staff.