Jorge Garcés Ferrer

Application of screening tools to detect risk of hospital readmission in elderly patients in Valencian Healthcare System (VHS) (Spain)

The Sustainable Social and Healthcare Model (SSHM) is aimed to establish new care pathways in primary care systems contributing to the decrease of health services use and costs and improve the integration and efficiency of social and health care for elderly people with long-term care (LTC) needs. One of these strategies is the segmentation of population in risk groups through standardized tools. This paper is a retrospective study aimed to determine the viability of the implementation of the screening tools Probability of Repeated Admission - Pra - and The Community Assessment Risk Screen - CARS - to detect patients at risk of hospital readmission in a sample of 500 elderly people (65+) from the VHS in Spain. Patients were recruited from three Health Departments. Data from selected tools and predictive variables were collected through the healthcare database from the VHS. The most important results indicate that both instruments predict with high efficacy the proportion of patients not readmitted (negative predictive value between 91% and 92%). Moreover, the tools performed with a moderate efficiency being the Pra less sensitive (54%) and more specific (81%) than CARS (with a sensitivity and specificity of 64%). Results from this study suggest that the application of instruments as Pra and CARS are of interest to the Valencian Health Administration as they can be a good strategy to improve the management of elderly patients at risk with comorbidities and guiding clinical decision.

Sustainability and Transformation in European Social Policy

Contents: Jozef Niznik: The Idea of a Welfare State and the Future of EU Social Policy - Rachele Benedetti: Policy Integration, Local Governance and Citizenship: The Challenge of Participation in the New Welfare State - Caroline de la Porte/J. Timo Weishaupt: The Open Method of Co-ordination for Social Inclusion and Social Protection: Theoretical and Empirical State-of-the-Art - Katja Mohring: Employment Biography Patterns and Income in Old Age in European Welfare States - Karl Hinrichs: Demographic Trends and Pension Systems: Is Increasing Retirement Age the Promising Solution? - Anna-Maria Isola: The Conflicting Messages of Russian Population Policy - Jerome De Henau/Susan Himmelweit: Comparing Welfare Regimes by their Effects on Intra-household Inequalities - Angela Genova/Louis Ulrich: The Impact of the EU Social Model on Social Economy Development in Italy and Romania - Claude Martin: The Invention of a Parenting Policy in the French Context: Elements for a Policy Tracing - Simone Sarti/Marco Terraneo: A Comparative Study on the Relations Between Inequalities in Health and the Social Vulnerability of Europeans - Bruno Estrada Lopez: Social Partners and Climate Change - Mireia Ferri: Sustainability of the Social Tourism Policy: The Self-assessment Model of Accessible Social Tourism - Irene Monsonis Paya: Social Policy and TICs: Policies to Prevent Cyberbullying in Europe - Aysecan Kartal Scifo: Between NGOs and the State: Turkish Social Services Sector, Post-1990s - Hester Kan: The Transformation of European Governance through Networks: Institutional Innovations but Continuation of Hierarchies, Struggles and Contestation.

Application of Social Policy Index (SPI) Amended in Three OECD Countries: Finland, Spain and Mexico

Currently there are no comparative studies to measure on a global basis social policy as a government input. An alternative is the inclusion of various relevant indicators for social policy in a single index, which allows a statistical and comparative analysis of different countries. The United Nations in 2006 proposed a tool to measure social policies in different countries called Social Policy Index (SPI), which results are not yet known. The aim of this study was to determine the feasibility of measuring social policy based on their inputs and applying the Social Policy Index (SPI) in three countries with different welfare systems, establishing a retrospective comparison of the situation of social policies of each one considering the years 2005–2010. The results show consistency between the value obtained by the SPI and the socioeconomic and political context of each country, and their classification in different welfare regimes, so it is an index that could be used as a tool for measuring and comparing social policies.

The Social Policy Index

Social Policy is a tool employed by states to intervene in society with an aim of reducing the effects of poverty and inequality by meeting peoples basic needs. The question is how do we measure social policy? In 2006, the United Nations Organization proposed a Social Policy Index (SPI), a methodological tool to measure social policy, with the aim of understanding the current regimes of economic and social structures in each country. The SPI suggests quantifying the elements of social policy, without focusing on their results, preferring to identify how the policy and the efforts of each government are materialized in some social indexes like social spending, social security, taxes, and institutional quality. Nevertheless, there are no known results to prove the effectiveness of this index. This paper discusses the proposal made by the UN and considers its application in particular time periods of social policy in Chile (1996 - 2010), a Latin American country and member of the OECD. A special emphasis is placed on the review of its dimensions, indicators, and information sources, identifying their strengths and potential difficulties in their applicability in Latin American countries like Chile.

Evaluating socio-economic impact of age-friendly environments

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2007), physical and social environments are key determinants of whether people can remain healthy, independent and autonomous. Health and well-being are not only determined by our personal characteristics but also by the envi-ronment where we were born and where we live throughout our life (WHO 2015). In fact, promoting age-friendly environments (AFE) is the most effective approach for responding to demographic change because they empower elderly people to age in better health, they pro-mote their social inclusion and active participation, and they help them to live autonomously into old age (Parent 2012). AFE foster health, well-being and the participation of people as they age; AFE are accessible, equitable, inclusive, safe, secure and supportive; and they provide services centred on people and support citizens to enable recovery or to compen-sate the loss of function so that people can continue to do things that are important to them (WHO 2015).

SPI+ Application in Two Countries with the Liberal Welfare Model: Cases of United Kingdom and Chile

Abstract The task of comparing social policies has focused primarily on quantifying the outputs, but leaves out an important factor for policy to be carried out, as is the quantification of the inputs. This paper focuses in the government effort to financing and implementing social policies. The goal is to present the results of the implementation of Social Policy Index+ (SPI+) in the United Kingdom and Chile from 2005 to 2012, establishing a transatlantic comparison of the inputs of social policy in two countries with a liberal welfare model. The research question is: Does SPI+ allows us to establish differentiation between countries that belong to the same welfare regime at different continents? To achieve this, the study uses the SPI+ as a tool for measuring and comparing transatlantic social policies. Through a comparative analysis of SPI+ results with a contextual description it is possible to confirm the consistency of the instrument for defining subgroups within specific welfare models, that also allows measure, classify and properly compare the two countries studied.

El turismo como estrategia de envejecimiento activo y saludable: efectos del turismo en la salud de las personas mayores

El turismo conforma en la actualidad un campo prolífero de estudios científicos en cuanto a los beneficios que conlleva. En relación a los sistemas de protección social, el turismo podría tener efectos positivos en las políticas enfocadas a la promoción de la salud y el bienestar de los ciudadanos, contribuyendo así a la creación de un sistema público eficiente, como se defiende desde la Teoría de la Sostenibilidad Social1. En esta línea, los autores analizan el perfil de salud de las personas mayores que viajan frente a las que no, así como las diferencias en su consumo de recursos sociosanitarios, con el objetivo de contribuir al estudio de la relación entre turismo y envejecimiento activo y saludable, y entre turismo y gestión más eficiente de recursos sociosanitarios. Para ello, se llevó a cabo un estudio correlacional con 189 personas comparando un grupo de 149 personas mayores que viajan (78,84%) con un grupo de 40 personas mayores que no viajan (21,16%). El instrumento de evaluación se elaboró siguiendo el modelo CIF: Clasificación Internacional del Funcionamiento, de la Discapacidad y de la Salud2, en base al cual se seleccionaron las variables de salud a medir y los instrumentos estandarizados a utilizar: la versión española del SF-12 Health Survey3 para la salud autopercibida, el índice de Lawton y Brody4 para la capacidad para desempeñar las actividades instrumentales de la vida diaria (AIVD), la Escala de Diener5 para la satisfacción con la vida y el índice de Berkman-Syme6 para el apoyo social. Además, se añadieron variables relacionadas con el consumo de

Valores y características de personalidad en estudiantes de Trabajo Social de la Comunidad Valenciana

En el estudio entramos a delimitar el perfil psicosocial de los futuros trabajadores sociales en la Comunidad Valenciana. Para ello se analizan las caracteristicas de personalidad y los valores (utilizando los cuestionarios CEP y SIV) de una muestra compuesta por los alumnos de 1er curso de las EUTS de Valencia y Alicante. Nuestras conclusiones posibilitan aclarar aspectos axiologicos y metodologicos relacionados con el Trabajo Social.