This report has highlighted a worrying lack of progress in relation to access to social services by older people from south Asian backgrounds in the south of Glasgow. While the picture is less bleak for health services in the area, using the perspective of older people themselves, the continuing paucity of hard data on access to health services by this group makes objective analysis difficult, although it is clear that health strategists are making efforts to remedy this situation.
Twenty five years of high priority, relatively well resourced strategies aimed at increasing equality in the city of Glasgow – with no shortage aimed directly at this specific geographical area and demographic group – has been unable to bring significant progress to this issue.
The introduction of theory around the concept of Candidacy might help to highlight possible scope for change in strategy development in this area. Particularly, attending to people’s sense of identification of themselves as candidates for services in the first place appears to be one of the key areas for future focus – an area that has not been fully considered previously in the formulation of equality strategy in the city.
Many older people from BME backgrounds value and make use of services that provide them with social contact with others mainly, but not always, of their own ethnic background. Females appear to require more ethno-specific environments than their male counterparts because their experience of home-based family caring has left them less well equipped to cope with the different cultural and lingual demands of the mainstream society.