Current State of Human Rights in Residential Care Facilities for Older Adults and Its Policy Implications

Abstract

Elder care facilities such as nursing homes and elder group homes, where older adults assessed as needing long-term care live, bear spatial significance in that they are where their residents’ daily living takes place and disease management is administered in the same space. Ensuring that residents of long-term care facilities live a life of dignity is a policy challenge that requires continued attention and actions aimed at promoting the human rights of older adults. Drawing on the findings of a needs survey, this article examines the current state of the guarantee of self-determination in residential long-term care settings, an element essential to ensuring that the residents live a life of dignity. I also discuss what needs to be done to further guarantee the right to self-determination for older adults residing in long-term care facilities and ways to create conditions to enable them to live their lives in a self-determining way. The needs survey was conducted online with heads and directors of long-term care facilities and elder group homes, given the difficulties of administering a survey on residents themselves of these facilities. The questionnaire was structured around several themes, including the ‘characteristics of facility management’, ‘safeguarding of self-determination rights for facility residents’, and ‘family and community participation’.