Sofie Van Regenmortel

Vrije Universiteit Brussel | VUB ·  Belgian Ageing Studies (BAST)

Population ageing is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century and this will also significantly impact our housing sector. Currently, this sector is not adapted to a heterogeneous ageing population, and will challenge current and future housing policies. Next to objective architectural parameters for housing, there is a growing reque...

Studying the life courses of older people: The McAdams life-story interview Research among older people often focuses on the present. Nevertheless, life course research can help to understand how certain behavior and feelings take shape and evolve throughout the course of life, and how life events at a younger age can influence conditions, behavior...

This chapter reports on a cross-national exploration on manifestations and drivers of exclusion from social relations, in rural Britain and Belgium. Each study was composed of a quantitative and qualitative phase. The quantitative phases operationalised exclusion from social relations using existing datasets within each country while both qualitati...

This concluding chapter outlines key contributions of the book, indicating how the individual chapters have pushed beyond the current state-of-the-art scientific knowledge on social exclusion of older people. Drawing together some of the major cross-cutting themes emerging from the different parts of the book, the chapter highlights interconnection...

This chapter introduces the topic of social exclusion in later life and presents a rationale for this edited volume. It will provide an overview of existing knowledge, focusing specifically on research deficits and the implications of these deficits for scientific study in the area, and for effective and implemental policy development. This chapter...

Drawing on interdisciplinary, cross-national perspectives, this open access book contributes to the development of a coherent scientific discourse on social exclusion of older people. The book considers five domains of exclusion (services; economic; social relations; civic and socio-cultural; and community and spatial domains), with three chapters...

Social exclusion is complex and dynamic, and it leads to the non-realization of social, economic, political or cultural rights or participation within a society. This critical review takes stock of the literature on exclusion of social relations. Social relations are defined as comprising social resources, social connections and social networks. An...

To gain insights into vulnerable lifecourses and give a voice to those often underrepresented in quantitative research, this study examines the life stories (past, present and future) of 19 financially excluded older adults using an adapted version of McAdams’ life-story interview scheme. Although these life stories demonstrate an accumulation of m...

Utilizing a mixed-methods research design consisting of two consecutive phases, this study investigates older adults’ perceptions and understanding of social connectedness factors influencing late-life volunteering. In the first phase, quantitative data from the Belgian Ageing Studies project (N = 24,508, from 89 municipalities) was analyzed throug...

Aim: This paper aims to identify barriers that frail community-dwelling older adults experience regarding access to formal care and support services. Background: Universal access to healthcare has been set by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a main goal for the post-2015 development agenda. Nevertheless, regarding access to care, particula...

Experienced life courses of older people living on low incomes: a qualitative secondary analysis of interviews in Sweden and Belgium This paper examines the life course of older people living on low incomes in Sweden and Belgium through a comparative social policy perspective. The research focuses on current experiences of living on a low income, a...

This paper focuses on the prevalence and measurement of old-age social exclusion. Currently there is limited knowledge of the prevalence of old-age social exclusion in Belgium. Although studies have already shown that older adults can experience exclusion in more than one dimension, the multidimensional nature of social exclusion is often lost when...

The Belgian Ageing Studies was developed as a participatory project involving older people to assess the age-friendliness of their community and to develop a local policy plan based on the findings of the assessment. This contribution will look back at 14 years of the Belgian Ageing Studies, and reflect on the realizations, strengths and limitation...

While there is a substantial body of work that describes how exclusion from social relations can lead to loneliness, it has not been rigorously tested in relation to other outcomes such as life satisfaction. In addition, it is hypothesized that psychosocial resources can modulate the experience of exclusion from social relations. Therefore, the cur...

Objectives: This study examines different combinations of informal and formal care use of older adults and investigates whether these combinations differ in terms of need for care (physical and psychological frailty) and enabling factors for informal and formal care use (social and environmental frailty). Methods: Using cross-sectional data from...

Prevalence data of elder abuse from social and health services only present a tip of the iceberg. A large amount of situations of abuse is left undetected. Professionals often lack knowledge and skills on the topic of abuse. Consequently, this paper focuses on supporting professionals to prevent and assess elder abuse by developing and testing the...

This article aims to identify relations between socio-demographic/socio-economic characteristics and the use of informal and formal care. All analyses were performed on data from the Belgian Ageing Studies, a survey among community-dwelling older people (60+) in Belgium. Latent class analyses were used to identify types of care use and bivariate an...

Several debates have emerged across the literature about the conceptualisation of active ageing. The aim of this study is to develop a model of the construct that is focused on the individual, including different elements of people’s lives that have the potential to be modified by intervention programs. Moreover, the paper examines the contribution...

Eén van de doelstellingen van de Europa 2020-strategie is het reduceren van het aantal mensen dat in armoede of sociale uitsluiting leeft met 20 miljoen. Hoewel er relatief veel onderzoeks- en beleidsaandacht gaat naar sociale uitsluiting, zijn het voornamelijk kinderen, jongeren en volwassenen op de arbeidsmarkt die in deze onderzoeken centraal st...

Research on old-age social exclusion seldom takes a life course perspective into account. Therefore, this study aims to explore how older adults experience social relations across the life course and how inclusion in or exclusion from social relations is associated with other social exclusion dimensions (e.g. material resources and participation)....

This presentation will compare and contrast the personal perspectives of three students who each attended different iterations of the International Summer School of Ageing (ISSA): 2012, 2014 and 2016. We will outline the key learning outcomes we obtained during the summer school and what this meant for our career trajectories after the event. In pa...

Despite an increasing focus on the effects of the life course on inequalities in health and wellbeing, a life course approach has found little attention in social exclusion research. One major aspect of the life course, labor market participation, is often not included when examining old-age social exclusion. The current study examines qualitativel...

PurposesThere is evidence of an increasing emphasis on the relevance of the quality of life-paradigm as an outcome measure for clients in geriatric, forensic, as well as correctional care. This paper aims to explore to what extent variables that were categorized according to the main areas of the Good Lives Model (‘the self’, ‘the body’ and ‘social...

This study describes the development and validation of the Elder Learning Barriers (ELB) scale, which seeks to identify the obstacles that affect the level of educational participation of older adults. The process of item pool design and scale development is presented, as well as the testing and scale refinement procedure. The data were collected f...

In the last decade, there has been a growing awareness regarding social exclusion. Considering the ageing population and the likelihood of older people being socially excluded, the aims of this article are to: (1) review existing studies concerning social exclusion in later life; and (2) identify how environmental and life-course perspectives are p...

This research note aims to address the lack of research focused on the audiences of amateur theatre and examines how audiences of artistic- (i.e. participating in festivals with high artistic requirements) and social- (i.e. not participating in those festivals with high artistic requirements) oriented amateur theatre groups differ. This is achieved...

Rechten van ouderen in langdurige zorgsituaties worden soms of zelfs regelmatig met voeten getreden. Dit leidt in sommige situaties tot ouderenmis(be)handeling. WeDO2, een Europees project rond WEllbeing and Dignitiy of Older People, ontwikkelde een reeks workshops om te werken aan (nog) meer kwaliteitsvolle zorg.

Rights of older people in long-term care situations are sometimes violated, which might lead to elder abuse. WeDO2, a European project concerned with the Wellbeing and Dignity of Older People developed a training to keep on improving quality in care.

Feelings of unsafety have negative consequences on social outcomes (decreased social participation and lifelong learning). Specifically a large number of older adults report distressing levels of feelings of unsafety. In order to develop intervention strategies we need accurate estimates of feelings of unsafety among older people using elder-friend...

Volunteering among older adults has received increasing attention from researchers, policy makers, and associations. However, there remains a lack of knowledge in how volunteering is impacted by other activities in the lives of older adults. In order to understand activity engagement in later life, insights into the extent to which activities compe...

We leven steeds langer en hebben de voorkeur om oud te worden binnen onze eigen vertrouwde leefomgeving. Deze wens van ‘ageing in place’ is niet alleen een wens van ouderen zelf, maar wordt ook gestimuleerd vanuit het beleid. Toch geven verschillende onderzoekers aan dat we het beeld van honkvaste ouderen moeten nuanceren en dat koste-wat-kost in d...