Abstract

Although, the idea of keeping old people in institutional care still sounds strange for many Nigerians, yet, it is increasingly difficult for families to cater for them in their own homes, or in the homes of their immediate families or relative, especially, those who require specific professional assistance either from a care giver or a professional health care giver. Therefore the study investigated the impact of institutional support on wellbeing of elderly in selected assisted living facilities in Lagos State, Nigeria The study employed a descriptive survey research of expost-facto type while a simple random sampling technique was used to select 3 homes in Lagos State. All the 80 older persons residing in the selected assisted living facilities were used for the study. A self-developed questionnaire tagged ?Institutionalization Support and Wellbeing Scale? (ISWS) was used. The reliability score yielded 0.74. The study used a descriptive statistics of simple percentage while Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to test the research hypotheses. The result revealed that there is a significant relationship between institutional support and happiness of the elderly (r = .708, N= 80, p<.05); also, there was a significant relationship between institutional support and self-esteem of the elderly (r = .813, N= 80, p<.05,equally, there is a significant relationship between Institutional support and social interaction of the elderly (r = .736, N= 80, p<.05), and finally, there is a significant relationship between institutional support and mental health of the elderly (r = .641, N= 80, p<.05). It was recommended that, policy makers should expedite action on the policy implementation to cater for the care of elderly people in the country. Meal planning should be individual based for each older person in the home. There is need for more spiritual personnel in geriatric homes so as to provide services that are outside social and health care. Also, it may be necessary for the government of the country to consider establishing neighbourhood adult day care centres where elderly persons can meet each other during the day which is managed by trained and qualified social workers and other health care professionals