Prof Clare Harvey BA, MA, PhD

This study will explore the specific needs of Aotearoa New Zealand’s (NZ) older adults who cannot afford to pay for care, using guidance from successful projects that examined the social and economic impact of co-ordination for people living with complex conditions, realising that increasingly, care must consider individual, social, family and cultural connections (Harvey et al., 2021; Harvey et al., 2022; Vos et al., 2018; Woolcott et al., 2019). We want to identify factors that could be best managed through a central point of co-ordination or navigation that optimises the culturally and socially appropriate care and wellbeing of older people, and considers the best utilisation of existing system-wide resources. By the end of this study, we want to offer health funders with information that draws on both economic and non-economic evidence, that should be considered in the decision-making process for authentic person centric care to be actualised. Using an Ecological Systems Theory (EST) this study will examine the socio-cultural and economic environment that influences coping and wellbeing of older people in NZ and how these affect their ability to access the appropriate social, cultural and clinical support. EST allows for the interrogation of complexities that intersect individual, community and societal factors, thus facilitating the identification of the different factors that, in this case, impact on effective coping by the older adult (Greenfield, 2012; Woolcott et al., 2019; Yann Foo et al., 2022). This approach to investigation fits with the New Zealand’s Health Strategy’s view on living well, staying well and dying well, by which people are involved in their care that is accessible to them closer to home, through partnerships that are inclusive of individual, whānau, community and environmental needs (Health, 2016).