The Supporting Older Adults & Caregivers: Integrative Service Learning (SOCIAL) partnership trains undergraduate social work students to provide practical home-based support for older adults with chronic illness and their family caregivers, serving as a pipeline for future leaders in older adult care. More than 2 million older adults are homebound, and 5 million need help leaving their homes due to physical limitations from chronic conditions or cognitive impairments. Family members often assume daily caregiving tasks to assist their loved ones, navigate health care systems, and provide much needed emotional support. The challenges of caregiving are further compounded by the problems associated with insufficient health care professionals who are trained to work with older adults. Integrative service learning models can provide home-based support to older adults while offering valuable, hands-on learning experiences for students. In this teaching note, we acknowledge a need for developing an educational pipeline that can provide training opportunities for students to work with older adults and their caregivers at home. We provide an example of an integrative service-learning model which offers valuable pedagogical experiences to baccalaureate students along with strategies for curriculum building, community engagement, research and evaluation, and program sustainability.
Keywords: Field education; Health; Older adults; Social work with communities; Social work with families.