2026-10-07T22:27:31Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/33972679 2026-10-01T08:26:33Z category_27085 category_24505 category_27079 category_27739 portal_283 item_type_18 month_year_10_2026

Fact Sheet: GIS Care Overstrand - Mapping Elder Care Resources in Zwelihle, Mount Pleasant & Hawston 2026 Elena Moore (16906329) Zeenat Samodien (16905771) Sanelisiwe Soci (24597777) Vayda Megannon (16905702) Chanté Rochert (25095364) Family care Geriatrics and gerontology Aged health care Sociology of family and relationships family caregiving South Africa ArcGIS elder care ageing in place <p dir="ltr">[Fact Sheet]</p><p dir="ltr">This fact sheet examines elder care in Zwelihle, Mount Pleasant and Hawston, three communities in the Overstrand Municipality, to explore a policy tension at the heart of South Africa's Older Persons Act: the Act promotes ageing in place, but investment in community-based care that would make this viable remains limited. Drawing on a comparative study across the three sites, the fact sheet documents existing services, examines what is actually accessible and used, and identifies ways to strengthen community-level support.</p><p dir="ltr">Its central argument is that the presence of services does not guarantee access to them. All three communities have a patchwork of resources: social clubs, soup kitchens, outreach programmes, volunteer transport, medication collection, health checks and meal provision, but these operate in isolation from one another, with weak referral pathways and little systematic coordination. As a result, access depends heavily on individuals who happen to connect older people to available resources, making social networks a critical but largely invisible form of care infrastructure. Older people embedded in community organisations can draw on a relatively wide range of support; those outside these networks experience the same community as offering almost nothing.</p><p dir="ltr">This unevenness raises a deeper question about what "ageing in place" actually means where community and formal care are under-resourced: it can be a genuine policy achievement, or it can become a default arrangement in which families, volunteers and community organisations quietly absorb the responsibility that formal systems fail to meet. The fact sheet sharpens this concern by showing that service provision is not just fragmented but inversely distributed. The site with the largest and fastest-growing older population, deepest poverty and weakest infrastructure has the least developed care system, meaning services are thinnest exactly where need is greatest. The fact sheet therefore reframes the policy question from what services exist to how care systems connect people to support, who does that connecting, and who bears responsibility for sustaining it.</p> 2026-10-01T08:26:33Z Text Report 10.25375/uct.33972679.v2 https://figshare.com/articles/report/Fact_Sheet_GIS_Care_Overstrand_-_Mapping_Elder_Care_Resources_in_Zwelihle_Mount_Pleasant_Hawston_2026/33972679 CC BY 4.0