A Research On The Pathway Of Development Of The Elderly Volunteer Based On Active Aging Theory

With the sustained increase of aging population in china during recent decades, the elderly people have received more and more attention, and the number of researches for the elderly is also increasing. However, those studies regard the elderly as a vulnerable group of which studies have focused on pension, health care, etc. There are few studies about how to make old people participate in society and achieve their value, and how to make the elderly volunteer service influence profoundly and lastingly. This research, holding the active aging perspective, will provide a new perspective for the study of the elderly. The "new" is mainly focused on "active", which requires people to show a positive attitude and to take positive actions in treating aging people, and which encourages the elderly to actively participate in social activities so that the elderly are not marginalized as an integral part of the society. Ultimately the positive aging will be achieved by the attitude and measures taken as mentioned above.This study, which regards active aging theory as the theoretical basis, will use three dimensions (health, participation and security) of active aging to develop work of elderly volunteers. It has tried to work out the service plan for developing old volunteer service through some programs and activities in which the Nanjing CXJ community was taken as the object, and those programs had last for more than a month. The activity period was divided into four stages:chrysalis, initial start-up stage, evolution period, and terminal stage.38objects were selected for the staff in-depth interview, and they included:20users of elderly service,3elderly volunteers,8relatives of old people, and7staff of institutions and community service agency. It is a good option to understand the intended objects and evaluate the effect of the activities with the method of interview. Interviews contributed a mass of first-hand information and provided a realistic basis to this study. I attempt to verify three assumptions, and they respectively are’Active aging provides a new thinking and new perspective in dealing with the aging population problem’,’Group social work can promote the development of the elderly volunteers and improve the level of social participation of elderly people’, and "volunteers and social workers linkage’pattern is the future direction of the development of elderly volunteers’. By investigating the above assumptions, I can find problems and explore the developing pathway, thereby providing a realistic access to the realization of active aging.The study finally finds that a combination of professional social work methods, namely group work, and elderly volunteers is more effective than only using either of the two. In the meantime, to promote active aging, I attempt to pose the pathway to achieve active aging from three aspects:health, participation and security, and explore the strategic option of development of elderly volunteers. According to the features of the community and institution, I will also specifically analyze the trend of the development of elderly volunteers. Given the current situation of social work and volunteer service of china,’volunteers and social workers linkage’ pattern is a better pathway than any other is, and this pattern has expanded our thinking for building the active aging society.