Challenges for social work with older people in the first COVID-19 pandemic state of emergency in Portugal

• Autor(a) principal: Irene de Carvalho, Maria
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Teles, Helena, Ribeirinho, Carla, Marques, Eduardo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/30375
• topic: COVID-19; Older People; Portugal; Professionals; Social Work

This article seeks to understand the needs and difficulties of intervention with older people during the first state of emergency in Portugal due to COVID-19. The results show that these professionals faced challenges they never experienced before and necessitated support to carry out their work in an emergency. The difficulties resulted, not only from the chronic vulnerabilities stemming from the disinvestment of public policies in recent years but also from the uncertainty that the pandemic brought to social interventions. Despite all this, social workers have demonstrated their ability to protect themselves and older people and their families, thus leading to overcoming some of these challenges.