Scenario:
Anita is a 4-year-old girl who lives with her parents and her older brother Benjamin. Benjamin is 6-and-a-half years old and is enjoying his first year at school (in kindergarten). Anita and Benjamin are very close and although Anita has many friends at pre-school, she really misses Ben when he goes to school and when he has his homework to do. She wishes she could read his Readers with him. Anita has been uncharacteristically irritable at home lately and has been getting some headaches and stomach aches. She has also been quite tired because she has been often waking up at night.
Giovanni is an 81-year-old man whose wife Concetta passed away three years ago. Since she died he has found he spends more time indoors and on his own because he is a quiet and reserved man and she was the life of the party. Giovanni loves to spend time in his beautiful garden where he slowly shuffles around and grows beautiful roses. He finds it calming and prefers not to leave the house and garden too much since Concetta died. There is nothing much to worry about in his garden. He doesn’t have to worry about the traffic driving to the shops, or worry about people bumping into him at Coles when shopping, or worry about catching Covid. He doesn’t need to worry about getting sunburned walking down the street, or that he left the oven on when he went out.
Giovanni’s chemist delivers his medications but he gets annoyed that his doctor won’t make house calls. He has to go out to see her, to go to Coles, and to pay the bills at the post office when he forgets to pay them on time by phone. Maybe his memory would be better if he slept better.
One day Anita got an ear infection and Giovanni burnt his hand cooking. They each went to see their GP and met in the waiting room. Anita, being a friendly little girl began to chat to Giovanni about her poor sore ear and the purple daisies she saw on her walk to the doctors. Giovanni told her that he grows roses. They began to talk about their favourite flowers and were soon looking up blooms on Anita’s dad’s mobile phone. When their GP came out and spotted how well the two of them were getting on she had an idea and asked Anita, Anita’s parents, and Giovanni if they might be interested in joining an intergenerational playgroup that had started a block or two away. After explaining the concept both Anita and Giovanni were really excited to join but Anita’s parents weren’t sure about it.
Research has investigated the beneficial effects of intergenerational programs on both sets of generations involved. You may have seen the TV show “Old people’s home for 4-year-olds” on ABC iView which exemplifies this concept. You are a psychologist who has been asked to help inform Anita’s parent’s decision as to whether it would be a good idea to let Anita join Giovanni in this adventure. Research the effectiveness of intergenerational programs on the pre-schoolers and elderly people that take part in them and write an essay that specifically addresses the evaluation to the issues raised in the scenario above and provides a response to Anita’s parents and Giovanni in the conclusion.
The issues that you raise in the essay must be related to the scenario described above and the outcome of research results must be applied to the case of Anita and Giovanni.
Word limit: 1200 words