Caring for older people in Ghana
“If someone looks after you to grow your teeth, you must
look after him to lose his teeth.” – traditional Ghanaian
saying.
In Ghana caring for older people has always been a family
affair, but times are changing. Busy lives in towns and cities are
proving a challenge to traditional ideas of social care.
Family carers in
Ghana
Care in the UK
The centre of the
community
Family carers in Ghana
Alfred Kweli is 80 years old, he has 14 children and 28
grandchildren. Most of his family lives near to him in a suburb of
Accra, Ghana’s capital city, “I don’t really have any worries
because I can walk to see my family and they come and visit me and
can provide me with foodstuffs and money.”
Being in touch with your family and having relatives that can
provide for you is vital for older people in Ghana. Unlike here in
the UK, very few people have a pension and there is no benefit
system or government-funded care, so instead there is an informal
system of care services.
Ghana is in West Africa. It is roughly the same size as the UK,
with a population of around 20 million people. It is a tropical
country with a stable government and a developing economy, but many
people remain poor.
On most mornings Alfred can be found reading the paper and
listening to the radio with his friends at the Bubiashie Old
People’s Centre. They sit in a room that opens onto the street and
people walking past stop to chat and share news.
The centre is independent and has been funded by grants from
charities, but money is tight. There is no longer the money to
provide a meal for the centre’s members and hopes to develop a home
care service have been dashed.
“We come here to meet together, to converse, to deliberate. We
advise ourselves,” explains Veronica who is 97. Many of the older
people are left alone in the day, as their families are busy
working. It is also common for sons and daughters to move abroad,
which stretches the traditional bonds even further.
Veronica lives with her son, the only one of her three living
children that still lives in Ghana. At 97 she still works, sewing
children’s clothes. Because she works and earns money, even at 97
she is not considered old. Being seen as truly old in Ghana is
about being dependent.
Care in the UK
In the UK there is also a lot of care provided to older people
by their families and friends – these are known as carers (link to
carers section). In fact it is estimated that paying for this
informal care would cost the UK government £15 billion a year.
However, there is also a wide range of social care services
provided by local authorities, charities and private agencies. In
the UK Alfred would have his own income from a pension and could
ask his local social services team to assess his needs. Whether or
not he would have to pay for services, such as assistance with
washing or shopping or cleaning, would depend on the level of his
income.
In Ghana there is a much more community approach to social care
services and many people are resistant to the idea that they need
special or professional services to look after older people. The
idea that caring for older people is a private duty is woven deeply
into many Ghanaian people’s ideas of how society should be
organised. However the traditional system of informal care is being
put under increasing strain.
The centre of the community
The Bubiashie Old People’s Centre in Accra is a social hub. The
older people who use it are keen to keep it going. Because it is an
area of the city that does not have an electricity supply Alfred is
working out whether they can raise money by selling kerosene to the
local people.
Even though his family care for him he is aware that relations
between the generations are changing and that the Centre will be
more and more needed.
He feels worried that the younger generation do not take advice
as he did from his elders, “I don’t know how it comes about, they
take the whole world for themselves and when we talk to them they
say that our time has passed and this is their time.”