Studies On The Existing Problems And Solutions For Home-based Care For The Old In The Community

In the traditional cultural backdrop of fulfilling the filial duty to the old, Chinese society attaches great importance to family ethics and family affection, but pressed by the outdated scale of institution for elderly care and service options, the traditional home-based care for the old still plays a mainstream role in elderly care methods today. Nevertheless, the severe situation of social provisions for the aged in China is beginning to transition to traditional home-based care for the old accepted socially. Actually, the preferred method for the socialization of traditional elderly care is to build up a service platform with social provisions for the elderly to integrate resources of social provision for the aged, forming a top-down and inside-out resulting mechanism for elderly care, under which senior citizens can fully enjoy professional social care for the old happily and be counted on and looked after properly without being away from their own living space and family. Home-based care for the old in the community, as a socialized product derived from the traditional social care for the old, serves as a beneficial make-up to traditional home-based care for the old and institutionalized elderly care, having developed into an optimal selection of a new-type endowment pattern.In spite of this, due to a late start and poor basis of home-based care for the old in the community in China, problems like unsound operating mechanisms with outdated management methods, lower service levels and low service specialization levels still exist, plus the discrepancies in social cognition, priorities of different levels put on the topic of home-based care for the old in the community in different provinces in China. The developmental difference is huge which is severely affecting the further development of the social care for the old in our country. Based on this, the paper takes the home-based care service for the old in a community in Changchun as the survey target, and by means of case analysis on the realistic conditions of the home-based care for the old in the community from the aspects of investigating service content and standard provided by the service station and the station staff’s comprehensive quality as well as the demands from the aged group and their willingness to accept such services, we find that the home-based care for the old in community in Changchun is still at a preliminary exploration stage, the resultant mechanism among the government, community, social organization, civil societies and welfare organization have not been formed, no benign connecting channel between the elderly care service provider and demander has been established and professional service team has not been built as well as poor integration of resources of social provision for the aged due to lack of the platform for public participation. Unlike the developed cities in the south, home-based care for the old in community in Changchun is poorly developed and needs to be promoted by building the social support system in order to expedite the cause of elderly care in China.In view of analysis on the existing problems of the home-based care for the old in community in Changchun, corresponding solutions are specified in this article: giving play to the government’s guiding function, improving the construction of the service platform for home-based care for the old in community, proactively mobilizing social forces to participate in the cause of elderly care and striving to integrate the methods of social work profession into the home-based care for the old in community for the sake of creating a service support system for home-based care for the old in the community led by the government, organized and coordinated by community, answered and participated by social organizations, civil societies and welfare organizations, turning the traditional home-based care for the old into modernized social care for the old.