Spirituai Needs Of The Elderly And Social Work Intervention Research

Aging process is an irresistible trend in the 21 st century in China. According to the estimation and prediction of the old population quantity during the period from 2000 to 2050 by the United Nations, China’s elderly population will remain increasing until 2065. In other words, China’s aging population will experience a 115-year growth. In spite of the fast growth of economy, China is still in a typical situation that "not rich, old first" and "not ready, old first", compared with the increasing level of aging of population. Because of the fading of families’ supporting functions and imperfectness of the social security system, along with rising empty-nest families and lonely families, all kinds of problems regarding the old are increasingly emerging, the way of family based aged-care is being greatly challenged, and cannot fulfill the current pension demand. Therefore, more and more old people would like to choose institution endowment actively or passively.With the high occupancy rate in endowment institution, the risk becomes higher. A series of physical and psychological issues emerged among the elderly. Modern medical practice has proved that negative emotions could damage our immune system, which is also the cause of psychosomatic disease. Solving the mental issues for elderly people, and meeting the elderly people’s spiritual demand depend on the joint efforts of society, family and the elderly themselves.This paper aims to exert the function of "People first" and "Helping human to help oneself" in social work and help elderly people in welfare homes enrich their lives, satisfy their mental needs, improve their spiritual life and then improve the quality of life. In order that China can achieve the goal sooner that " supporting, medical care, learning, worthiness and enjoying the life" and promote harmonious social development.The author takes the elderly living in the Social Welfare Institute of HanZhong as study object, oriented by meeting the spiritual demand of the old people, using Literature,Participant observation and Non-structure interview, studying the social work involving the spiritual demand of the elderly living in welfare homes. Firstly, the author took an internship in order to learn about the basic situation regarding the welfare institute and the old livingthere, as well as the pattern, content and form of the service for the old. Secondly, through individual interviews, the author accumulates a large number of real cases and guided by Maslow’s theory of hierarchy of human needs, analyze the major content of the spiritual demand of the old people living in welfare institute. In addition, taking the social supporting theory and activity theory as the guidance, aiming at the old people’s demand, the author exerts the professional concepts and methods, interferes from regular and microscopic view and designs corresponding solutions. The individual case method is the microscopic interference, in which social workers use professional knowledge, theory, methods and techniques to motivate the interviewer’s potential and positivity, helping the interviewer improve the environment, coordinate social relations, establish positive interaction network and learn and face the problems using healthy and mature mentality. Group working method is the regular interference in which by designing recreation programs and activities, enrich the old people’s spiritual life, help them adjust themselves, enhance the sense of belonging, and then develop potential and improve the quality of their spiritual life. In the end, by analyzing and evaluating the individual cases and group cases, the author affirms the positive effects gaining from professional individual cases and group cases in welfare institutions, gets some inspiration and proposes some ponders and the suggestions.