Careers:COURSES

The Old in the Community is an innovative and flexible course about the elderly. Drawing at every point on the student's own experience, it challenges stereotyped attitudes to old age and out‐of‐date concepts of caring. Through role plays, discussion, practical research and, most important of all, talking to older people encountered on placements, the student is led to a new awareness of the particularly vulnerable position of the frail old person. The module is divided into six units, each containing briefing notes for the tutor and five group assignments. The module was piloted in Spring 1979 with students on the Preliminary Residential Care Course, was successful in stimulating a high degree of sensitivity to older people's circumstances and developing students' confidence in their own ability to relate to older people.