Better Together: Expanding Rural Partnerships to Support Families

Chronic shortages of health, social service, and mental health professionals in rural areas necessitate creative partnerships in support of families. Cooperative extension professionals in Family and Consumer Sciences and community health nurses are introduced as trusted professionals in rural communities who can bring critical skills to human services teams. Multidisciplinary prevention programs offer particularly good contexts for county extension educators and community health nurses to work in collaboration with social workers. The case of grandparents raising grandchildren illustrates the critical roles that can be filled by professionals in these two fields to extend the reach of family support programs

Ambivalence in later-life family networks: Beyond intergenerational dyads

In later life, changing conditions related to health, partnership, and economic status may trigger not only support but also conflict and ambivalence, with the consequent renegotiation of family ties. The aim of this study is to investigate both conflict and emotional support in the family networks of older adults, taking the research beyond the level of intergenerational dyads. We used a subsample of 563 elders (aged 65 years and older) from the Swiss Vivre/Leben/Vivere survey. Multiple correspondence analysis and in‐depth case studies were used to identify the key social conditions that relate to the prevalence of conflicted and supportive dyads in family networks. Findings showed that the balance of conflict and emotional support in older adults' family networks varied according to the composition of their family network as well as their age, health, income, and gender