Sociolinguistic and statistical methods to survey the communicative needs of home-assisted elderly, their families, and foreign caregivers in Northern Italy

This contribution reports on the latest developments of Age. Vol.A. (Ageing, Volunteers, Assistants. Multilingual tools for assisting the ageing), an ongoing funded research project on ageing issues in Northern Italy’s Varese province. Its main aim is to facilitate communication between the home-assisted elderly, their families, and foreign caregivers and, in so doing, ultimately improve elderly care. After statistically analysing the socio-demographic background of the geographical area involved, the study describes how surveying tools to obtain information from the three groups addressed were devised. Based on a multidisciplinary methodological approach drawing upon sociolinguistics, socio-anthropology and statistics, these tools were first submitted only to the home-assisted elderly’s families and relatives, from whom secondary data about the home-assisted seniors and foreign carers were also obtained. Findings highlight that the latter are mainly migrants from Eastern Europe and Central and South America, who have been working with their current senior for less than two years. A large portion of the sample works more than five days a week and more than 20 hours a week. Finally, most of the caregivers spend almost as much time with their seniors than before the current global pandemic, which means that COVID-19 has had no major impact on their working lives.