The lifecourse perspective is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding the mental and physical health of individuals. For older people, it is a particularly helpful lens, as it takes account of what has happened across that person's life and considers how what has happened has affected their health and well-being (Milne, 2020). Old age is, in turn, a social category that may be damaging to a social worker's understanding of age as a lived experience or of differences between a 65-and a 95-year-old. As a ‘catch-all’ label, this category may also contribute to ageism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, care home residents were effectively ignored until quite late on and many died. The fact that they were marginal to national public health considerations played a key role in their treatment; some commentators would even argue that their human rights were violated – an issue that should be of concern to social workers (Amnesty International, 2020; Anand et al, 2021).

This chapter will argue that gerontological social work needs to (re)connect with the lifecourse and old age as a social category for four reasons: to increase its credibility, to enhance its capacity to be effective, to engage meaningfully with ‘what matters’ to older people and to challenge ageism in practice.

The lifecourse approach

A lifecourse approach seeks to identify how health outcomes are shaped by biological, personal, psychological, social and historical factors throughout a person's life, as well as those factors that impact on it in old age (Kuh et al, 2002). Human development is a lifelong process, and the relationships and events of earlier life stages have consequences for what happens in subsequent stages (Bengston et al, 2012). On the whole, however, issues that damage health – whether they are lifestyle habits such as smoking, socioeconomic issues such as poverty or personal experiences such as childhood abuse – tend to be researched as single issues. As health is an outcome of a range of different lifecourse factors it is most helpful, both for the person and the practitioner, to try to appreciate the impact of these issues in a holistic way: this understanding underpins the lifecourse approach.