Cognitive impairment in home help service users from a gender perspective

• Published in: INFAD (Barcelona) Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 65 - 72
• Main Authors: Isabel Damiana Alonso López, Joaquín Francisco Álvarez Hernández
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asociación Nacional de Psicología Evolutiva y Educativa de la Infancia Adolescencia Mayores y Discapacidad 01-11-2019
• Subjects: deterioro cognitivo; género; servicio de ayuda a domicilio
• ISSN: 0214-9877; 2603-5987
• DOI: 10.17060/ijodaep.2019.n2.v2.1897

This report aims to know the level of cognitive deterioration of the Home Help Service (Servicio de Ayuda a Domicilio, SAD) users, to somehow understand if this is the main cause of the request for this service, and if from the gender perspective can exist some differences in the demand for mentioned social activity. According to the National Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE) as of January 1, 2019, the population in Spain reached almost 47 million citizens, and more than 9.12 million are over 65 years of age.  Although the SAD is aimed to all people without age range; it is true that a significantly higher percentage of its users are those who are in the “Senior Citizens” group. This community service is directed to all those families and / or subjects with different degrees of difficulty to carry out daily, dairy activities, in their own homes. According to different studies such as the one carried out by Álvarez, Mercader and Sicilia (2007), “age does determine the degree of basic autonomy”; there are also differences in cognitive impairment in addition to the percentage of people affected by gender.