EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - Services for Elderly from Ethnic Minorities

Services for Elderly from Ethnic Minorities - Dortmund, Germany

Introduction

How to improve services for elderly from ethnic minorities - the case of Dortmund, Germany.

Description

In Dortmund community care aims at improving the quality of life of black and ethnic minority elderly. Like the whole Ruhr region, Dortmund has been affected by processes of work migration in the 1950s and 1960s. The total numbers of elderly from those ethnic minority groups are still small today, but they will increase rapidly within the next decades.

Approach

Dortmund has started relatively early to work on the topic of social services for immigrated elders. That was around the beginning of the 1990s. Several actors, including the local authority itself, are involved. Almost all charitable associations have taken up special measures to open their mainstream services for black and ethnic minorities.

The strategies include:

Opening up existing social services for the needs of elders from different ethnic minorities.
Translation of information material.
Recruitment of staff with matching cultural backgrounds.
Special advice services for immigrated people, that increasingly concentrate on elders.

Results

From 1992-1995 he city funded a day care centre with special and separate services for different ethnic minorities.
The fundings of the day care centre have been reduced, but it still exists as a model of good pracitce and is now organised by the Associaton for International Friendship. This day care project has won two important German prices.
In 1996, at the request of the Immigrant Advisory Council, the city installed grave plots for Moslems in the municipal cemetry.
More than half the members of Islamic mosque associations are 60 years and over. For them these associations have the function of day care centres.
The Jüdische Kultusgemeinde, the Jewish community organisation, offers a range of services for their members. It has a day centre five days a week.
A private outpatient health care service developed in May 2000 focuses especially on older people from ethnic minority groups.
Quite a few attempts have been made to built up co-operation structures between serveral organisations. According to Vera Gerling, who analysed the situation in Dortmund, many of the relevant organisations and institutions do not co-operate enough.

Contact info

Wissenschaftcentrum Nordrhein Westfalen
Vera Gerling

Project start date

18/03/2004

Links

City of Dortmund Wissenschaftcentrum Nordrhein Westfalen

Background Report by Dr. Vera Gerling (PDF, Eng, 193 KB)

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Quality of life

Keywords

Social services