The perspective of the elderly on services provided by municipalities: Etimesgut Municipality example

Nowadays the rapid growth of the elderly population has become one of the most important problems in the 21st century. For this reason, elderliness services are a topic that is on the agenda all over the world. When the people get older, they experience various problems. Some of them are health problems, maintenance problems, neglect and abuse and loneliness so on. Hence, the elderliness involves physical, psychological, and social changes. So the services which will be offered should be aged-focused. Today, services for elderly people are carried out with public local governments and non-governmental organizations. In order for these services to be able to meet their needs, elderly people's evaluations are important. From this point of view, the main purpose of this study is determine to how the services which are provided by Etimesgut Municipality evaluated by the elderly people. It is hoped that the data obtained from the research will be effective in improving the services. The universe of the study consisted of elderly people residing in the Etimesgut district. 164 people from 60 years of age who are receiving services in the Municipality of Etimesgut. . The model of the research is the descriptive model. The survey's data were collected from May to June 2017 and consisted of 164 elderly individuals who were receiving services from retirement homes and agree to participate in the survey. In this study, demographic characteristics, psycho-social problems and the relationship between these problems were examined. The data of the study were obtained using the interview form. At the end of the research, it was found that all the participants were between 65 and 74 years of age, more than half of them are married, 41.4% received education up to high school level, 80.5% have a pension, 40.2% of them having income less, where more than half of them live in their own home, friend relationships are important, almost all of them are feeling. Generally elders expressed satisfaction with municipal services. Those who are not satisfied have indicated that they are not satisfied of the transportation services. When socio-demographic characteristics of the elderly are compared with their happiness level, it is seen that women, marriages, those who declare low income and seniors with high education status are happier. Furthermore, when the relationship between the happiness of the elderly and the service received from the municipality is examined, a positive relationship was found .That is, the happiness rate increases as the satisfaction of the services received from the municipality increases. Keywords: Aging, Municipal Government, Social work.