The goals of this article are (a) to examine social service needs and (b) to develop better social service programs for the elderly who are handicapped. In this paper, we conducted face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews for 167 noninstitutio...
The goals of this article are (a) to examine social service needs and (b) to develop better social service programs for the elderly who are handicapped. In this paper, we conducted face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews for 167 noninstitutionalized elders in 1998. As a result of the interviews, we found statistically significant differences in ADLs/IADLs, social activities, life satisfaction, severity of problem, and perception, usage, needs of services upon types of disabilities. In particular, the result showed that the disabled elderly with sense of sight have strong needs for home helpers. The disabled elderly with sense of hearing were eager to get information easily, and the physically disabled elders were very interested in improving their health and the related services. Based on the analysis of this result, we propose specialized welfare policies and service programs development for the disabled elderly considering the characteristics of their handicap.