Social support, Source of social support, Availability of social support, Difficult situations, Social work

The results of our previous research (Kowaliková, Chytil, Czech Slovak Social Work 1:65–83, 2019a; Kowaliková, Chytil, Sociální práce/Sociálna práca 3:62–81, 2019b) show that seniors do not have sufficient availability and access to social support in difficult situations. Given that our previous research does not clarify which difficult situations seniors had in mind or to whom they would contact in a difficult situation, we carried out this research to learn how seniors define difficult situations. We also examined the sources and availability of social support in the identified difficult situations faced by seniors. The theoretical base is the theory of social support. Using the method of qualitative content analysis according to (Schreier, Qualitative content analysis in practice. SAGE Publications, Los Angeles, 2012), we sought answers to three research questions: (1) How do seniors define difficult situations? (2) According to seniors what is the availability of social support (anticipated and received) in difficult situations? (3) According to seniors what are the sources of social support in difficult situations? Our key research finding is that seniors have identified the reduction of their self-sufficiency in everyday activities as the most significant difficult situation. We also learned that the fear of financial unavailability of a formal source of social support in the event of a reduction of their self-sufficiency particularly concerns seniors from one-person households. The research results provide justification for the claim that a fundamental task of gerontological social work is to develop interventions aimed at ensuring and maintaining the availability of social support.