Abstract
This intervention plan covers the requirements of elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, who are disadvantaged because of their cultural, social, and economic circumstances. An integrated model of “essential social determinants of health” is utilized to provide comprehensive and culturally sensitive support services to meet the needs of this population. In this regard, it has been determined that the intervention strategy would include theoretical concepts such as social support theory, resilience theory, cultural competence theory, and empowerment theory. Support groups, counselling sessions, and activities were leveraged to give the attendees information about healthy coping skills, support formation, and strengthening of their emotional skills. In addition to collaborating with relevant stakeholders, teamwork will foster the intervention’s achievement, leading to synchronized goals. Input from participants and professionals indicates the program’s positive impact on emotional health and social network formation within the selected population.
Introduction
Indian women of a mature age in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, constitute a group with distinct needs and experiences. Individuals within this population, particularly those going through the divorce process, face various challenges and the lack of access to suitable support services (Mangipudi et al., 2020). The core objective is dealing with depression, preventing loneliness, and fostering mental health. This intervention plan aimed to produce specific outcomes such as maintaining retreats to share experiences, organizing experiential workshops on coping skills and counselling sessions, and creating a sense of oneness and belonging through field trips and social festivals. We planned to accomplish those elements by enabling elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg to adapt to life changes with dignity, strength, and confidence and support their holistic well-being and community developmental process. The culturally sensitive techniques and collaborative working with stakeholders make a way forward to creating an environment that supports participants who can access resources, build social networks, and effectively skill the coping methods.
Chosen Population and Their Needs
The population of the intervention is those Indian women who are 60 years old and above and who reside in Pietermaritzburg, a City in the KZN province of South Africa. It is the Indian majority that has driven Pietermaritzburg’s unique culture that is associated with the imprints of Apartheid and colonial legacy. Old Indian ladies in this neighbourhood face difficulties at a crucial juncture due to their being old, female, our ethnic community, and their economic background (Maharaj, 2020). The substantially larger cohort of older women in Pietermaritzburg who are 60 years of age and above is the headquarters for poverty and inequality. There are likely some among the people who come from India or those who may be descendants of immigrants who landed in South Africa way back before colonization. Some would be descendants, while others of different backgrounds coming from places further than just a town might be. All the same, they discovered and made their own homes and enjoyed the City.
Despite their resilience and cultural strengths, elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg face several specific needs and challenges. While their cultural endowment and size may act as a source of strength, there are also unique needs and challenges that the elderly Indian women of Pietermaritzburg are faced with. Many elderly Indian women are now living alone or in a small community of female widowers (Subramoney, 2015). Their close family members, such as siblings or companion spouses, may have passed away or moved away. Indeed, the immediate impact of these conditions on mental health may be to raise hopes and stir up emotions haunting such experiences as disappointment, aloofness, and numbness from the things that are of high value in our cultural frameworks.
Older women may leave their homes to manage health issues but may condemn themselves for being less productive, causing society to marginalize them (Subramoney, 2015). As friends and family dominate desires, hostility increases, resulting in misfits. Dialysis may prevent some older women from receiving mental health care despite the stigma in India. Due to Indian taboos, older women may not receive the best psychiatric help or disclose psychological difficulties (Subramoney, 2015). Cultural beliefs, parenting practices, religion, and mental health myths can increase this stigma. Pietermaritzburg hospitals may not have enough resources to treat old Indian women’s mental health. Culturally compatible therapy, support groups, and community-based initiatives tailored to their needs may be lacking.
Objectives and How They Are Achieved
- To ensure the provision of safe spaces where people can share thoughts, memories, and feelings to create room for friendship and solidarity.
- To encompass strategies on coping skills in workshops and sessions, to provide individuals with helpful tips that will enable them to handle everyday problems.
- To build unity of purpose and support throughout the community with diversity appreciation, inclusion, and integration of individuals of varying origins.
These objectives were realized as indicated below:
Establish Safe Spaces for Sharing
The volunteers were invited to set up support groups at community centres and local organizations, which a qualified social worker or counsellor led. Attendees were animating their stories whenever they needed to talk, speak about their coping methods, and comfort each participant (Barry et al., 2019b). Listening to them revealed that his clients felt less burdened and authenticated in their affiliation to a particular culture when they expressed their feelings and life stories with others from the same background.
Coping Skills Workshops and Counseling Sessions
Educational workshops and counselling sessions were ordered, and they were held regularly on issues like the idea of surviving after maternal loss, stress management, and personal care ideas. Participants admitted that they had achieved a new level of awareness of coping strategies, and at the same time, they felt they knew how to manage their emotions better (Riedel et al., 2021). Additionally, among the key findings was improved coping skills, as exhibited by learners’ ability to use and benefit from the new skills in their real life and to handle the daily challenges better.
Encourage a Feeling of Unity and Belonging
A few grouping activities and cultural events were held, primarily associated with chores such as cooking lessons, performances of traditional dance, and storytelling. Besides social interactions among the participants, which uncovered their traditional heritage, a strong foundation for long-lasting relationships was formed (Hinrichsen et al., 2020). Consequently, these volunteers reported feeling closer to the community, which made them feel less lonely and expanded environmental support.
Theory and Intervention Approach
Overview of the Intervention Plan
Some group activities and cultural events, like cooking lessons, performances of traditional dances, and folk tales, were held. The events served as a common meeting place for the participants to display their traditional attributes, thus creating long-lasting social ties (Hinrichsen et al., 2020). Consequently, they responded by feeling unity and closeness, making them less lonely and part of their support system. The main constituent of our intervention plan is translating these women’s cultural and societal context into an understandable way so they can participate more effectively in the intervention. Using theoretical frames, we have grasped the practical perspective of the issues they confront. Such linguistic, socioeconomic, and cultural hurdles may create obstacles to their path toward education and the resources they may use. We have a multi-faceted plan that combines multiple aspects to make a whole intervention process. Acknowledging that these courses are the backbone of our strategy, we focused on supplying educational programs that fit the requirements and tastes of elderly Indian ladies. This educational fervour stood on a wide range of lessons, such as how to read a health leaflet, manage finances, and use a PC, among others, enabling them with the exact tools they need for a livable life. On top of educational programs, we build the intervention program upon assistance services such as counselling, mentorship, and community activities with the aim of treatment. These elements provided a suitable area where women could explore learning and self-development over a long period. Our plan also focuses on community partnership and collaboration among stakeholders, including local leadership, healthcare providers, and educational institutions. By mobilizing the community’s assets and the existing resources and expertise, we can cast the net more expansively when addressing the community’s needs.
Explanation of Relevant Theory
Social support theory states that people with appreciable social relationships, relationship networks, and social support may have healthier outcomes and higher satisfaction levels. These days, social services are essential for the elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg (Cohen & McKay, 2020). They may feel a lack of company and support, especially if they face health problems such as loss, loneliness, and isolation. Having got that, our special recipe has put much stress on these groups streamed by trained professionals. This group fulfilled multiple purposes by creating a secure and empathic atmosphere for members to share their experiences, offer mutual support, and learn from others (Conley et al., 2013). By integrating them into groups of peers and establishing this sense of belonging, our goal is to improve the social support for elderly Indian women, which ultimately makes their emotionally safe environment and boosts their overall quality of life.
In resilience theory, so much resides with each person with the innate potential to survive and get the upper hand in a predicament. The main element of our intervention plan was giving the pretext to the essence of resilience as a responding skill for senior Indian women and introducing the dilemma of how to succeed in life challenges (Southwick et al., 2014). Besides organizing seminars and counselling, this program was designed to acquire hands-on tools and self-support to help participants control their stress levels, manage the pain from loss and grief, and prepare for possible emotional challenges (Barry et al., 2019a). We had two objectives: the training would produce self-reliant participants so that they can face the challenges they may come across in their lives bravely, and this self-reliance would enrich their well-being by providing them with the psychological space they want and, in turn, would give them the power to affect the flow of their life in the way they have chosen.
The cultural competency theory speaks to the classroom teacher’s need to understand and respect the cultures of those they teach when delivering interventions. Regarding the older Indian women in Pietermaritzburg, I, being the chief care worker, concluded that our intervention plan needed to be culturally sensitive and responsive to their specific preferences and cultural needs. As a result, we included Indian culture and customs as the main components while creating the content of our intervention so that it would resonate with the daily life and the traditions of our primary audience (Jongen et al., 2018). Facilitators went through cultural sensitivity training to lift their knowledge and practice of cultural sensitivities as a form of inclusivity within the settings during the intervention. One of our primary objectives was to value and praise the cultural heritage of our participants because we believed that this could formulate an environment conducive to healing, gaining insight, and building up one’s confidence.
Empowerment theory focuses on strengthening people’s experience of self-efficacy, power, and individuality for mental health. Our action program aimed to empower older women in India by teaching them how to advocate for their needs and rights, plus the skills and resources they require (Spence Laschinger et al., 2010). The women were taught about health issues through awareness meetings, coping skills, and available support services. We also had team contests, social activities, and gatherings so that all parties involved could talk, share, and form a network of sensibility and togetherness (Barry, 2007). As our goal was to allow participants to take a grip on their well-being and be actively engaged with the tools and means they would have, the focus of the matter was the sense of ownership and agency.
Summary of Responses/Feedback
The execution of our intervention plan for elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg was central to technical information received from various institutions during the project’s development. We got several recommendations for which goals we achieved better and which we need to improve and develop further. Participants of the scheme, stakeholders, and other essential parties mentioned that they had acknowledged and accepted the intervention plan well. Elderly Indians in the program shared their satisfaction with bonding with like-minded individuals and acquiring methods of active coping that are easily personalized for their specific living conditions. Our partners were able to see their worth and learn confidence through conversations in friendly places groups (Barry, 2007). This is a stakeholder group in which community leaders, health professionals, and cultural community bodies gave feedback on the intervention plan. Among the things that they pointed out was our culturally sensitive approach, which showed the importance of respect and recognition of the older women’s cultural heritage of the Indian women in Pietermaritzburg (Peltzer, 2023). Stakeholders accentuate the value of community work and collaboration in healing the target populations, pinpointing that these processes must happen in partnership and over a long time.
A key achievement in our intervention was the formation of close-knit social ties among participants. Participants of the support groups felt they were amongst the family in the intervention groups, which brought out the bonding experience, which they all appreciated as one of the most important sources of emotional and practical help (Murfield et al., 2024). Through the intervention, most participants observed uplifts in their emotional lives and increased resilience. They emphasized the advantage of being a part of group support and shared experiences against the struggle.
The implementation was also accompanied by presenting some things that need to be mentioned. Practical problems, such as lack of transportation for certain people in our group, hampered the attendance of intervention activities since the same people were not even coming to the programs (Skeen et al., 2010). Another factor to be considered is cultural issues and factors such as cultural stigma and misjudgment, which bring more complexities for the participants to participate, thus making the importance of the cultural problems and factors very profound as they need to be considered closely when developing and in giving implementations of such interventions (Posel, 2021).
As per the Feedback, we enhanced the intervention by incorporating new components, removing parts with low effectiveness, and making it more implementable. As aforementioned by Troisi (2020), the strategies’ developers made decisions, for instance, enhancing the available transport options for users to improve accessibility, increasing the flexibility of activity schedules for different people’s needs, and adding education and outreach to combat the stigma that stands in the way of mental health issues.
Furthermore, we realized we should live with stakeholders and establish proper communication with them to achieve our pre-decided goals. The elements that were highly significant for the success of the intervention were constantly searching for feedback, promptness in responding to the demands of the participants, and forming partnerships with major stakeholders. The plan must be reviewed to be consistent with our aim: to help older women be healthy in Pietermaritzburg (Kiely et al. 2019). The community and its various stakeholders have all cooperated to develop a system that would cause any modification in the implementation of the intervention plan. This is the unique aspect that differentiates our team from others. The feedback is not only received as a normal physiology function but also hijacked as curiosity about the meaning of the stimuli. The majority of things are revised, strengthening the power of public opinion and creating a newer, healthier environment.
Critical Personal Reflection
Having been engaged in formulating and implementing the plan for elderly Tong Tong women in Pietermaritzburg for one whole year, I can say that it has been the most outstanding journey for me and the most significant achievement so far. Realizing the participants’ needs caused a shift in perception. For a successful intervention, I understood the critical aspect of using culturally sensitive methods, e.g., stakeholder participation and theory-driven plan development. These became ever more real with the time that empathetically responding to a diverse population is more crucial than anything when striving towards their needs. Indeed, one of my focal points during my psychosocial assessment of elderly female Indians in South Africa, Pietermaritzburg, has been regarding how the culture and traditions of society impact their state of mental well-being and is a determining factor as regards their decision-making about seeking medical or treatment help. Respect and consideration of these cultural elements were the basis from which we developed the program to ensure that the target population members could connect with it and accept it as it reflected their experiences and that trust and engagement were achieved.
Furthermore, the practice of stakeholder engagement made it clear that good teamplay and cooperative approach are as crucial as themselves in accomplishing significant improvement in communities. One of the most critical things we did was to involve community leaders, health professionals, and other stakeholders in the planning and implementation stages of the intervention. We were able to leverage their expert knowledge, resources, and networks to increase the impact of our intervention. In addition, the theories of intervention focused on our recovery plan and guided our understanding of solutions for addressing the issues of the defined target group. Applying understandings derived from Social support theory, resilience theory, and empowerment theory, the intervention tactics were created to include socializing, promoting resilience, and boosting the confidence of elderly Indian women in Pietermaritzburg.
Conclusion
The plan ending my intervention for urban older women of Pietermaritzburg has proved to bring interesting revelations and some solutions that match the culture of those people addressed above multi-facet problems they experience. By the deployment of the intervention we have considered, we noticed the activation of positive emotions, resilience, and reinforcement of relationships within the social circle of the participants. Implementing robust support systems and cultural acceptance led our efforts to open numerous possibilities for society’s poorest and most exploited communities. My involvement in this intervention has shown clearly that more concerted attacks ought to be sustained at the behest of the older women from Indian communities in Pietermaritzburg and others. A respectful and culturally sensitive process that values and appreciates participants’ cultures should be at the heart of the intervention by which trust, engagement, and lasting results are achieved.
Furthermore, the value of stakeholder civic engagement and theory-based intervention concepts escape no one’s notice because they give us a systematic and organized way to analyze and manage the complicated requirements of our population of interest. As for future intervention, it would be better to keep emphasizing natives’ heritage sensitivity and community cooperation to support the needy women of Indian origin in Pietermaritzburg. Future research projects may delve into the lasting effects of the stakeholder approach on patients’ mental state and propose alternative techniques to combat the widespread prejudice, as well as perceived stereotypes, as barriers to their willingness to see help. By comparing, evaluating, and applying what we understood as beneficial for reaching elderly Indian women’s well-being and resilience, we hope to advance this effort further and go beyond the boundary of Pietermaritzburg.
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