The following article analyses participation possibilities of older people in Austria based on the demographic change. On this basis, categories of work types are established and discussed. This concerns the areas of people’s own work, familial work, informal and formal engagement as well as paid work. The social worker’s attempts to the creation of the informal and formal engagement are presented from an Austrian perspective. Introduced volunteers centres and citizens’ offices devote themselves to the coordination of the engagement within the community. In addition, there are new attempts arising in volunteer’s work, like for example voluntourism. Social inequalities are to be considered in participation within society. Th ese form along the differences of age, gender, levels of education, migration and socio-economic status. Different participation areas are furthermore to be distinguished against the background of a critical discourse around participation. Participation can cause positive eff ects for older people and therefore it seems important to work on its realization. Part of this task is to indicate diff erent barriers and possibilities of implementation. Finally, quantitative proportions and developments in the diff erent working forms of older people will be discussed.

In recent years, demographical changes have posed a significant interest for social work. The primary aim of social work as a science and as a profession is to ensure the social participation of all people on all levels of society: micro, meso and macro. Social work is therefore connected not just with individuals and families, but also with communities and society as a whole. This paper presents how this characteristic of social work in homes for the older people infl uence on the transformation of Slovenian institutional care from primary residential care to centres of care for the older people. Th e signifi cant impact is in the diff erence of social work between socially and medically oriented homes. Th e diff erence lies in social work methods as well as in the roles of the social worker in different areas of work with the residents, relatives and staff . This approach enables the provision of holistic care for the older people in institutions and in the community. Slovenian homes for the older people with existing and planned forms of assistance in the community demonstrate that institutional care is not necessarily linked only to the classical care in an institution. The transformation of homes enables the development of new forms of care for older adults both inside and outside each home for the older people

The caregiver role can be challenging as family members address the oft en complex needs of aging relatives. Resilience, the process or trait related to addressing and rebounding from adversity, may play a role in determining how well family caregivers fare. In this study, the authors explored the relationships between resilience and well-being in a uniquely resilient group – family caregivers to Holocaust survivors. Surveys were completed by a convenience sample of family caregivers (N = 89) living in the United States. One-way between subjects ANOVA with Scheff é post-hoc tests were run to compare low-, moderate-, and high-resilience caregivers. Depression was significantly lower for each progressively higher resilience group. Physical well-being was signifi cantly lower in the low-resilience group. Caregiver burden was not signifi cantly diff erent between groups. Resilience may have a prophylactic role in preserving physical and emotional well-being in family caregivers; however, resilience and burden may have a more nuanced relationship. Burden may have been underreported due to (a) comparisons with the stress experienced by the Holocaust survivors and/or (b) a heightened sense of filial piety. Health care practitioners should be aware of the complex role that resilience can potentially play both in protecting well-being and in masking burden in family caregivers.