Perspectives on Productive Aging

Social Work with the New Aged

This new and important book announces: “Productive aging is more than a cliché.” An increasing number and proportion of older persons—regardless of health conditions—want to maintain meaning and control of their lives, and social workers have vital roles to play. Lenard Kaye’s much needed book provides readers with an understanding of productive aging and focuses on professional roles and responsibilities. The book is well-written and well-edited, presenting material on social work interventions from individual counseling to service provisions. Chapters include helpful tables, charts, and case examples, and an appendix provides a list of potential resources for practitioners. This is a book to be read and to be used, and will be a valuable resource for social work students, professors, and practitioners.

Jordan I Kosberg, ACSW, PhD

The University of Alabama Endowed Chair, School of Social Work, The University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

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As social work moves ahead to relate the profession’s knowledge and skills to new cohorts of older adults, its vision must not only look down the road at the challenges of an aging society, but also look forward to the potential contributions of unprecedented numbers of older persons with much to give. The thoughtful and well-articulated direction for practice provided in Perspectives on Productive Aging: Social Work with the New Aged charts a course for the profession that will maximize its contribution to building a “society for all ages” as called for in the United Nation’s Proclamation of the Year of the Older Adult.

JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez, LCSW, PhD

Director, Center for the Advancement of Aging, Programs and Practice (CAAPP), Associate Professor, University of California, Los Angeles

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Despite evidence that older persons are now healthier, more active, better educated and more involved in society, social work with older persons has continued to focus on aging from a deficits framework. Perspectives on Productive Aging: Social Work with the New Aged, breaks new ground by concentrating rather on a strengths perspective. It addresses an important gap in the social work literature and helps social workers re-orient their thinking about practice on micro and macro levels with older persons. Chapter authors are an impressive list of well-known experts on subject areas such as employment, education, spiritual growth, physical activities, and others. This excellent, thoughtful and innovative volume should be required reading for all social workers involved in gerontological social work and others interested in this topic.

David E. Biegel, PhD

Henry Zucker Professor of Social Work Practice and Professor of Psychiatry and Sociology, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University