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In Sweden, limited research has been carried out to examine how the combination of aging and gender affects the needs assessments for older clients in social work. This study aims to explore how conceptualizations of aging and gender is expressed by care managers in old age care, and how this affects their obligation to conduct individual needs assessments. The methods are focus group interviews with care managers and observations of staff meetings among care managers in three Swedish municipalities. The theoretical framework draws upon a combination of ageism, gender theory, the concepts of geras and elderhood, and the concepts of the third and fourth age. The results show that individual needs assessments can be affected in different ways, depending on factors such as context, the circumstances of the meeting with the client, as well as the care managers’ work conditions and the time available for reflection. In conclusion, the study highlights the need to increase care managers’ knowledge of how conceptualizations of aging and gender affect their approaches towards older clients’ needs, and to develop tools to manage these, in order to reduce the risk for biases in individual needs assessments. |
