Age as an organizing principle for the provision of services to persons with support needs

Despite a strong emphasis on supportive services being provided according to individual needs, the Swedish welfare system often use chronological age to determine who is entitled to such services. This constitutes a contradition and governs the provision of personal assistance, home care and other services. In the balancing act between equality and individualized services, chronological age is a wild card. A person who acquires severe impairments at the age of 66 is not entitled to the same services as a person who had the same impairments at 64. Persons over the age of 65 cannot apply for personal assistance, and can only apply for services under the Disability Act if their disabilities are ‘clearly not the result of normal ageing’. Age is also used for entitlement and in some municipalities, all persons over 75, regardless of needs, are entitled to eight hours of home care. The aim of this project is to investigate age as an organizing principle for the provision of services for people with support needs. Guided by the concept of moral economy, the project will investigate the practical application of arguments regarding age-categorizations at the institutional level, among service providers and older people. Three research questions will be addressed: How are age categorizations applied in the legal framework that regulates social care services for people with support needs, and what arguments are used to justify such arrangements? How is policy implemented in practice and how is the use of age categorizations perceived and justified by professionals who manage services? What are the attitudes towards the use of age categorizations among the older people? The project will use a mixed-method approach, using focus groups, documents analysis, and survey data. An overarching ambition is to contribute to the reduction of age-based inequalities by identifying practices that discriminate older people and by raising awareness about how age is used to organise welfare services.


Project funding: FORTE (Dnr: 2017-01738) 4 100 000 SEK. Time of project: 2017-10-01 - 2020-09-30

PI: Tove Harnett
Co-PI: Håkan Jönson
Other researchers in the project: Titti Mattsson, Per Norberg

Ethical approval: Decision Regional Ethical Vetting Board Lund 2018-09-12 Dnr:2018/695