not be left to communities and private organisations, but it requires collaboration from different stakeholders.
Government and private organisations play an instrumental role in encouraging older persons to volunteer to work and assist within their communities. Reports from participants indicate that this encouragement was done to help them spend their time constructively and prevent boredom. Findings suggest that encouraging older persons to volunteer is one of the effective strategy of helping them to do something new that breaks their routine. This is often done so that they have some of sort of entertainment and eliminate feelings of loneliness and boredom. However, Joubert and Bradshaw (2006) found that an effective way to encourage older person to volunteer in activities is to introduce events and tasks they are interested in.
Therefore, the study suggest that older person should be consulted on activities that they want to engage in.
government should come up with strategies of promoting education programme among older persons to empower them with knowledge on their rights. These programs can be facilitated through churches and other community based organisations through a collaboration between the department of education and social development.
Communities have an important role to play in supporting older persons. As reported by the participants in this study, Folweni Township has inadequate formal or informal community care facilities for older persons. There is need for government and stakeholders to build facilities or renovate old buildings to provide formal paid care to older persons. The study found that older persons are ignored in decision-making processes designed to improve their life. There is need for community leaders to use a participatory approach to allow older persons to contribute their ideas or opinion on how best they should be taken care of. Older persons should be given space to identify, analyse, and solve problems that they face. The participants reported that there is a lack of entertainment in their community. In collaboration with the private sector, government should identify fun, productive and beneficial activities such as swimming, morning walks, gardening, group trips, and games with proven benefits for both physical and mental well-being. This initiative can be achieved by training unemployed volunteers in the community. Another concern that emerged from this research is that many older persons lack a sense of purpose of life. There is a need for families and community leaders to be trained to help older persons feel connected and useful as this is effective in nurturing a sense of purpose and living life to the fullest. This can be done through a community health counsellor that will be stationed in the clinics.
The study suggests that the current transport system is failing to meet the needs of older persons. It is high times the South African government encouraged the pooling and sharing of resources to help fill gaps in local transport provision, working together with the voluntary sector. There is a need for older persons’ access to healthcare to be improved by linking of health and transport services. All future design of public transport should have old person users in mind, using technological improvements and customer insight to improve their experiences. Vehicle manufacturers must ensure they take older people’s needs into account.
Older persons do not have easy access to primary and secondary healthcare. There is a need for government to train geriatric social and health workers by investing in geriatrics. The
study found that older persons have food security and nutritional challenges. There is a need for government to mobilise older persons around matters of nutrition and food security by giving them support they need to access food they need. This should be done by training them on the already existing government initiative of one home one garden and should be provided with free seeds.
Older persons carry out roles of carers for AIDS patients and suffer first and second HIV and AIDS stigma. There is a need for government and private organisations to run counselling programmes on how to take of HIV and AIDS patients and how to deal with different levels and types of HIV and AIDS stigma.
The study has indicated that the government needs to bolster its efforts in the provision of facilitates to support older persons. As reported by the participants, it takes long for older persons to receive accommodation from government. Government should put mechanisms in place to improve house service delivery so that older persons do not get houses posthumously. Though government has put in place a Victim Support Programme for older persons who are targeted by criminals, there is need to improve service delivery so that people who abuse older persons are arrested as soon as the matter is reported. Government should partner with all salient stakeholders to organise fun activities for older persons. Most importantly, government’s grant for the older persons is inadequate.
There is “need to investigate socio-economic challenges facing the older persons in Folweni Township in KwaZulu-Natal using quantitative research methodology to provide an in- depth” understanding. Moreover, there is a need “to conduct a longitudinal study on the challenges facing the older persons” in Folweni Township in KwaZulu-Natal. The study should be replicated in other townships in South Africa and there is “also a need to conduct a comparative research between townships if there are differences in the different townships and geographic” sites. Finally, this study “can be replicated focusing on family members and government to allow the collection of community balanced” findings.