Think positive to help older migrants
A forum in Melbourne hosted by National Seniors aims to put the needs of older migrants back on the agenda.
By Stephen Easton
A forum in Melbourne at the end of the month will explore the many unique challenges faced by the many older Australians who come from migrant backgrounds as they grow older.
Advocacy group National Seniors invites aged care stakeholders to come to Melbourne Town Hall on 28 June for the forum on productive ageing, to “hear the latest findings from leading researchers and have your say on what might help older adults from various backgrounds to have a better experience of ageing”.
The forum will feature presentations from two academics, Dr Siew Ean-Khoo from the Australian National University and Dr Susan Feldman from Monash University, and a panel of experts will discuss the question, ‘Are older Australians from migrant backgrounds ageing well?’.
Members of the expert panel include Emeritus Professor Trang Thomas from RMIT, Ljubica Petrov from the Centre for Cultural Diversity in Ageing, Dr Hass Dellal of the Australian Multicultural Foundation and Pino Migliorino, Chair of the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils Australia.
Mr Migliorino said one of the biggest challenges faced by older migrants, especially those from non English-speaking backgrounds, was the gap between their expectations of what their families could provide for them, and what they have the capacity to provide.
“What we need to come to grips with is people from ethnic communities are not necessarily accessing services because the expectation that their family will take care of them,” he said.
Dr Alexandre Kalache, one of Adelaide’s Thinkers-In-Residence and the international expert who coined the term ‘active ageing’, made similar comments last week that aged care services must facilitate access to information to allow isolated older people, especially migrants, to access the services they are entitled to.
“What we are seeing in societies in developed countries in general, and Australia is not an exception, is that over the last few decades the traditional family structure we used to have, [where children look after their aged parents] and which is still prevailing in developing countries, is disappearing,” Dr Kalache said.
“Especially when you talk about specific groups. In Australia, you have many migrants that are now ageing, often without a full grasp of English. A lot of the information may not be accessible in a language they are familiar with and sometimes, they don’t know how to read.”
Mr Migliorino said that the issue was twofold; mainstream aged care service providers needed to develop the capacity to meet the diverse cultural and linguistic needs of migrants, and migrants needed to be educated that many mainstream services can cater for them.
“There are some significant responsibilities that fall on the service providers, but at the same time, in order for service providers to feel they are meeting a demand, we have to feed that demand from older people from migrant backgrounds.”
“There are areas like dementia and mental health where communities are quite sensitive to the issue – basically they are not willing to engage with service providers because of the sensitivity of the issue.
“Breaking down the stigma and normalising dementia is extremely important. In some languages there is no word for it; it can be interpreted as insanity or mental illness, rather than a specific disease with its own processes.”
Mr Migliorino added that he hoped the forum would be attended by academics, policy makers, service providers and older people themselves, to achieve a focus on the issue of services for older migrants, which he said had not been on the government’s policy agenda since the 1990s.