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Alcohol use has been recognized as a challenge in eldercare and social care, and some anticipate that problems related to alcohol use will increase in the future as the current adult generation has high alcohol consumption rates. Accordingly, it is suggested that care workers are at risk of becoming passive bystanders to the destructive lifestyles of vulnerable older adults and even facilitating these lifestyles. In the present paper, we suggest that alcohol exacerbates and underscores inherent difficulties in eldercare, such as finding an appropriate balance between the personal freedom of the older adult and the responsibility of the care worker to provide care. The specific focus in the paper regard the communication and interaction involving values between people in eldercare in cases of problematic alcohol‐related situations to uncover the difficulties. We found it noteworthy that the objectives and perspectives of older adults, care workers, managers and relatives have implications regarding their interactions and communications because their varying experiences involve values that are not necessarily aligned. Sometimes, care workers have no choice but to act against what, in the public sphere and to the other care workers, is ruled out by virtue of their professional ethics. It is suggested that care workers describe and judge situations where alcohol is present paradoxically by virtue of their professional ethics, yet regulate their care to preserve the dignity of older adults, even when they find the situation to be an apparent dilemma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This qualitative study is concerned with the motivations that lead older adults to enter treatment for alcohol problems. There is a need to expand our understanding of the unique characteristics and problems of this population to be able to devise specialised and effective treatments and preventive measures., Method: We conducted an analysis of secondary findings from interview data collected in a qualitative interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) study. Our participants were 12 elderly people aged 60 years or more who had experienced late-onset alcohol use disorder. Transcription, categorisation, collapsing and analysis were conducted rigorously in accordance with the IPA standards., Findings: Family can function as a pressure structure in terms of fostering motivation for treatment. Participants were to a certain extent ambivalent about treatment, which led them to devaluing treatment and its effects. Our results are on par with comparable results from other studies., Conclusion: Older adults who experience very-late-onset of alcohol use disorder experience familial pressure and health concerns which lead them to enter treatment. Our participants seemed ambivalent about treatment and its necessity, which seems to lead to a devaluation of therapy., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2017.)