Minimum Quality Standards in Social Services for the Elderly

The paper presents an inventory of the quality indicators that social services for the elderly must fulfil and it also shows ways of implementing them. Also, the paper presents an example of measuring the quality of social services for the elderly. We have used a qualitative data analysis methodology and the main instruments were: the data collection sheet, the document matrix and the inventory of documents. The traditional stages of content analysis were as follows: inventory of standards, indicators, procedures, and tools; standardisation of the data present in the aforementioned quality standards; classification into analysis units; identification of the main categories of analysis; coding; and final data analysis. Three categories of information emerged from the analysis: the roles of the elderly from the protection system, the relational system of the institutionalized elderly and the social integration of the institutionalized elderly. The main conclusion of the paper highlights the importance of developing intervention techniques and tools for social workers in conjunction with the dimensions resulting from the analysis of the quality management system.