The Re-establishment Of Social Relations Of The Elderly Losing Only Child From The Perspective Of Social Support

The family planning policy has taken effect for around 30 years in China, which resulted in that the family structure has shrunk and the nucleus family of three members and with the only child as the core has become the mainstream of our social structure. But the risks concerning this phenomenon keeps emerging, among which a special group especially need our attention—the lost only old men, parents who lost their only child because of accidental death, and the families with these old men.The loss of their only child would undoubtedly take disastrous blow on those families, which have to bear not only the bereavement but also the economical,social and spiritual pressure. In addition, most of these old people are reluctant to interact with others, leading to a gap between them and the society.It is obviously a problem for these families, and to be worse, it will be a serious problem for the whole society.Most previous studies on these old people were mainly made on a rather macroscopical level, focusing on China’s fertility policy, population aging, social security,pension difficulties, old-age security, community care, social work and social insurance,etc,but little attention has been paid to their social relations and needs together with the reconstruction of their social relations and other issues. Based on the above, in this paper, we made a research under the perspective of social support, taking T District of Huainan as the survey site. During this research, we gained a huge amount of information and found the emotional and psychological grief of these childless old men to see their mental needs in view of the break-off of their social relations and social roles.Through such social work intervention methods as casework, group work and community work, we could finally have a new understanding of how to get involved in the rebuilding of their social relationship.We could integrate the social resources and reconstruct a new social network for the lost only old men while improving their confidence and competence of participating in social activities, mainly through building government backing, community assistance as well as other elements such as geopolitical and kindred assistance or assistance from the peer group and professional social organizations, which calls for integrating all the elements mentioned before and extending the content and range of social support for aged parents who lost their only child.