Many migrants have found a new home in Germany, are growing old here and some are in need of care. Culturally sensitive care is required in care facilities. How does it look?
A cup of coffee, a chat about what’s coming up today, and then the thrombosis stockings are changed. Servet Hüseyin looks forward to the outpatient nursing service coming every day. The 73-year-old pensioner comes from Turkey. Since the death of her husband, she has lived alone in her apartment in Koblenz – and she would like to stay there. Their children live outside and cannot look after them. “One son lives in Stuttgart, one in Lahnstein, the daughter in Wallersheim, but she works eight hours a day,” says Hüseyin.
Nursing means much more than just giving medication or doing the shopping, emphasizes Yaren Yilmaz from Nursing Service ZA: “Just keep a little company. I’m there for social issues, it just has to be.” This is made easier by the fact that she speaks Turkish and knows the culture of the people she looks after.
The 73-year-old Servet Hüseyin lives alone in her apartment – she gets help from the outpatient nursing service.
language and customs know
The team of the Koblenz nursing service with 40 employees from nine nations cares for more than 300 people in need of care. “These are people from eight nations. It’s important that our nursing staff speak the language, that’s the be-all and end-all,” explains Managing Director Zeki Akcan. “And the customs: if we visit a Muslim fellow citizen, for example, we take off our shoes in the apartment. If we care for people at home, we have to understand their culture.”
In technical jargon, this is called “culturally sensitive care”. This means that people can live and be cared for in accordance with their cultural characteristics and needs, even in old age. More and more people with a migration background are deciding to stay in Germany and grow old here – currently there are around 1.5 million over 65-year-olds. This also increases the number of migrants in need of care – according to estimates by the Federal Statistical Office, there are currently around 350,000.
anchored in law
The need to provide appropriate care for people from other cultures was recognized in Germany more than 20 years ago. At that time, the first generation of “guest workers” was reaching retirement age and nursing homes and services had to adapt to new challenges.
The need for culturally sensitive care was recognized by the legislature and laid down in Section 1 Paragraph 5 of the Social Code (SGB) XI: “In the long-term care insurance, gender-specific differences in the need for care of men and women and their needs for services should be taken into account and the needs for culturally sensitive care should be taken into account opportunity to be taken into account.”
Especially when old people become demented and increasingly live in the past, culturally sensitive care can be a key to caring for them in an appreciative and dignified manner.
Respond to residents’ needs
Culturally sensitive care is also an important topic in old people’s and nursing homes. In the AWO retirement home Remeyerhof, a concept is currently being developed in order to be able to respond to the needs of the residents. An example: for most people it is not relevant who cares for them or who washes them. But for devout Muslims, this plays a decisive role.
AWO employee Isabel Neubauer explains: “Anyone who believes in strict Muslim beliefs also has a special sequence when washing. So that’s where it starts. And of course attention is paid to who cares, i.e. that men are cared for by men and women by women . That’s really important.”
Isabel Neubauer works in an AWO retirement home.
But the nursing staff also had to rethink their leisure time activities. “For example, we have a singing circle. Many people from other cultures can’t sing along with the old folk songs. So, for example, we had a drum workshop here a few days ago. The children came and everyone played the drums. We can reach everyone with that .”