Validación de dos herramientas para la evaluación de cambios en las actitudes de alumnos en situaciones frecuentes en cuidado paliativo

Objective: To determine the psychometric properties of two scales designed to examine attitudes regarding palliative care: Comfort Scale in Palliative Care (CSPC, Pereira et al.) and Tanatophobia Scale (TS, Merrill et al.)Method: Seventy-seven students who completed an online course on psychosocial aspects of palliative care offered by the Latin American Association of Palliative Care participated in the study. They also completed the scales before and after the course. Construct validity and reliability of the CSPC and the TS were assessed using a Principal Components Analysis, internal reliability coefficient and test-retest reliability. Further, comparative statistics between the pre-course and post-course results were obtained in order to determine changes in attitudes.Results: The Principal Components Analysis showed satisfactory fit to the data. 3 components were extracted: two for the CSPC and one for the TS, which explained 55.37% of the variance. Internal consistency coefficients were satisfactory in all cases and Cronbach´s Alphas were satisfactory for all the scales, particularly for the CSPC. Test-retest reliability in t1 and t2 was found to be non significant, indicating that measures were not related in time. Regarding pre-course/post-course comparisons, significant changes in comfort assisting patients (p = 0.004) and comfort assisting families (p = 0.001) following the course were identified, but changes in thanatophobia were non significant (p > 0.05).Conclusions: both scales are valid and reliable. Attitudes regarding the practice of palliative care and how they change, particularly regarding psychosocial issues, can be accurately measured using the examined scales.

Art and Social Work: an intervention programme for transforming society’s vision to include people with early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s

This paper presents a program centred on arts and education as tools in social work for the inclusion of people with earlyonset dementia and Alzheimer’s. The objective of the programme is to eradicate the stigma and myths associated with the disease.The program is part of the Junta de Castilla y León and the European Social Fund’s ARS Project (Arte y Salud Alzheimer; Alzheimer’s Art & Health). The programme presents a series of evaluated artistic and educational activities that can be undertaken by people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease and that can also be used by caregivers and family when working with this group of people, with the aim of improving their wellbeing, self-esteem and quality of life.

Museums as a factor for the social integration of art in the community. The experience of cultural volunteering by members of the senior community

After considering museums as cultural institutions responsible for preserving cultural memory and its evolution over time, this article describes the cultural practices within our society that are aimed at disseminating art and at reproducing and transmitting culture, history and identity. Further, it considers the key role that older people are steadily assuming in Spain’s ageing society. New social-empowerment activities based on volunteering by the elderly are linked to generativity because the individual and social groups acquire new skills through those activities, thereby strengthening a society for all ages. Never in the history of social work have so many older people been prepared to participate actively at the community level, and never has a social movement with these features gone so unnoticed by so many social agents.

Welfare Regimes and “progressive” governments in Latin America: The cases of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia

Several authors have applied the concept of Welfare Regimens for studying social policy in Latin America (Esping-Andersen, 1993 and 2000). Among others, Martínez Franzoni (2007) develops a typology, with fi eld work is at the turn of the millennium, and establishes three categories: State-productivist regime, state-protectionist and family orientated. Most countries in the region are placed in the latter category. The hypothesis of this article argues that with the emergence of governments considered “left” or “progressive” in several countries of the region from the late ‘90s and, more decisively, in 2000’, the map of welfare regimes models could have mutated substantively. The nationally transformative experiences are different (various socio-economic realities and political action in which they are located exists) but they have several contact points that can be summarized in a greater state intervention in different areas previously closed to their operating and recovery of important functions of welfare and care of the population by the government. The paper discusses with an exploratory and descriptive approach the welfare schemes that would shape in three countries that have constitutionalized the change from the neoliberal paradigm: Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.