Intervention Study On Social Work For The Aged In China's Urban Communities

China is a developing country with most elderly population as well as most population in the world. Proper providing for the elderly has become an extremely urgent social problem with our country gradually stepping into aging society and our previous aging care model's defects increasingly coming to the front. However, the current social security system is not yet perfect, which requires us to figure out a sustainable aging care model aimed at resolving pension problem.Comparing and analyzing three modes of elderly support—family supporting, institution endowment and aged-care at home, this paper will draw the conclusion that the aged-care at home mode is the one according with our national situation and will be the main choice for future. Because this mode is of great potential for growth considering its optimum distribution of resources and its breadth, depth and social fitness in terms of serving the elderly. However, the model of aged support at home doesn't develop to the full during its implementation leading to many problems. These problems, which prevent it from forming a benign circulatory system, include lack of service variety, shortage of funds, low quality workforce, etc. As far as I am concerned, social workers, as an indispensable part of the harmonious society, may make up for the deficiency existing in the implementation process with their particular expertise, theory and working procedure. In other words, we can upgrade the aged service standards and quality and somehow promote the development of China's old-age social safety system, if we get social workers involved in.In 2007, the aged-care service centre of Yuyi community, located in Shekou street, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, happened to employ some social workers as servers for the elderly in their community and even the whole Shekou street. Since Yuyi is the first community to involve in professional social workers for senior service, this case is of great research value. Combined with the research, this paper analyzes how those professional workers make use of their unique ideas and technical methods to serve senior people, what attitude the elder hold towards those social workers, whether or not they expect the sequential service from specialized persons, whether or not the intervention of social workers benefits the prospects of aged-care at home model, and whether or not this kind of experiment could continue to grow.Originated from western countries, social work is nowadays far from mature in China. Naturally, there will be disadvantages as well as advantages during the intervening process of social workers in home-based care for the aged. Therefore, we must first place the practice under the background of the whole country and summarize the deficiencies as well as the experience by researching in the specific details and supporting measures of the service. Besides, policy suggestions based on this case should be put forward:we should raise people's recognition to social work; enhance social workers'professional level; and accelerate social work's localization process. The specialization, professionalization, and localization of social work team not only promote the development of human society, but also stanchly guarantee the sustainable proceeding of the aged-care at home mode with social work involved.