The Social Support Of The Caregivers For The Frail Elderly

As the coming of the aging society, there is a big problem of the amount of the aging elderly and the relevant senile disease. Since we own the traditional Chinese" rearing children for reciprocating" culture, cared the elderly in family is the dominate form. In the 1980s, as the implementation of the One-child family planning policy and the shrinkage of the family size, it results in the reduction of the family caregivers. Our family structure has become more "421", that is, the two young people to support four elderly and a child, family structures have caused the family to take care of the elderly people, the "care crisis" appears increasingly. Scholar has been studied a lot of research, but most is from the perspective of the elderly, it is lack of perspective from the caregivers, not to mention the systematic theories and research methods.In this study, caregivers are the studied object. Use of social support theory to describe the daily care of frail elderly, stress and difficulties the caregivers face, coping strategies to cope with stress. How they view their caring role? How are the coping strategies? How is the external social support they received about the current status? Finally, we analyze the internal and external coping strategies to stress the role of social support mechanisms, and from the perspective of social work practice to explore how to enhance and integrate a variety of social support and the social network intervention.The author used qualitative research methods, deeply interviewed six caregivers of their taking care of the daily tasks in Guangzhou. We found that they bear a lot of stress in the daily caregiving. They pay a lot of physical strength to take the heavy caregiving, they work with tremendous psychological problems and economic problems which affect their physical and mental health even the quality of their life and work. However, traditional culture, discipline, formed they own unique perception. They think that caring for the elderly is a filial responsibility and a responsibility based on blood and marriage which make them to form a set of coping strategies on the caring stress. In addition, caregivers gain social supports, including informal social support such as family, friends, neighbors to help and formal social support, which includes community service and national policies. Although there are many types of social support, the functions are different. Informal support is the mainly role, caregivers receive the most support from family members. Contrarily, the function of formal support is not dominate. The strong ties are used more frequently when seek for social support. When they meet difficulties which they can get sense of security. "Anyhow, the social support the caregivers receive and the coping strategy they develop reduce stress effectively to some extent.At the end of the research, we discuss two issues. First of all, how to improve the family supporting receive from the old-age policies? With the decline in family functioning, if our country continues to rely on family to bear the main responsibility, not to support the family on policy and social services, the family and society will face a crisis of "care burn out". Therefore, consummating the policies on family support is urgent. Secondly, how social work service to construct a caregiver supporting system? This study suggests that as a new elderly service at the practical level, it can provide home visits, outreaching service, mutual aid group support services, skills training, volunteer service played a good role; At the policy level, it can coordinate and integration the resources, promote mutual care and neighborhood spirit and promoting social elderly systems, etc. All of which will improve to the improvement of the elderly service and ease the stress of taking care of the frail elderly and their family.