Research On Socialization Of Urban Community Service For The Elderly

The emergences of"community service for the elderly"in our country started in the early eighties and have gradually taken shape throughout the following two decades. With the increase of aging population, only-child and nuclear families and elderly"empty nesters"who live alone with their children leaving home, the traditional mode of healthcare for the aged, in which the next generation shoulder the duty or burden of attending to the old generation has been weakened. Therefore, the demands for community service for the elderly are rising considerably and continuously, the requirement and expectation of such service are on the rise at the same time. However, the current situation of the community service for the elderly is still of typical"charity"nature and is far from satisfactory in terms of its item and scale. Due to such scarcity and limitation, the current service could hardly accommodate to the increasing demands. It readily leads to the necessity of the socialization of the community service for the elderly, and thereby socialized healthcare service for the elderly should be given immediate consideration.It has been proved by practice that the socialization of the community service for the elderly goes hand in hand with the reform of socialization of social welfare. Only by taking the path of socialization can the development of community service for the elderly in our country find its way to success and can we bridge the increasing gap between the demand and supply of such service. However, generally speaking, the current situation of the community service for the elderly still remain at the rather low level, which fails to keep apace with the growing aging population and falls short of their increasing demands for healthcare service. Such situation is in bad need of change and improvement. It calls for the support and participation from the whole society so as to expand the coverage and diversify the channels of community service for the elderly.This thesis starts with the analysis of the background information of the aging problems in our country, indicating that nowadays the mode of healthcare and provision for the aged people, such as family healthcare, charity healthcare or institution healthcare service are all confronted with great challenges. In this thesis, the socialization of community service for the elderly is put forwarded as the optimum solution to address such a predicament and it is exemplified by the case study of the community service for the elderly practiced in KuangJian Community. Drawing upon the various and pluralistic western experience in community healthcare service, the following points are concluded: Against the backdrop of the reform of"socialization of social welfare", to provide and promote the community service for the elderly calls for giving full play to the joint efforts from family, community, government and society. The currently available resources should be pooled and optimized in order to reach the goal of enriching the sources of investment, targeting the service to ordinary people, adapting the institution into market orientation, diversifying the items of service and building up a team of highly qualified specialists. In this way, a well-developed network of community service for the elderly, which is most suitable for socialist market and its development, featuring diverse ownership, flexible mechanism, favorable policy and standardized management, can be further developed and gradually come into being.