Social Support Research On Elderly People Living Alone In University Community From The Perspective Of Social Work

With the deep implementation of China’s Family Planning Policy, Chinese society has quickly stepped into the "Being old before rich" condition. The traditional family form mainly depending on the natural economy gradually disappeared, less birthrate and population aging is becoming more and more serious, and it has a growing population of empty nest elderly and the living-alone elderly.Elderly people living alone in university community have some special characters which are different from those in common communities. This paper takes university community L in Lanzhou City, Gansu Province in the western region as an example. The author collects date from 13 elderly people living alone in community L using semi-open interview. The study use social support theory and system theory to discuss the elderly people living alone that the present situation of getting support from the government, schools, communities, markets, family, friends, neighbors, as well as existing problems and influencing factors. The data shows that the elderly people living alone have a stable source of income, but there is a large gap among the old people, and they also easy to fall into the "expenditure poverty". The elderly people living alone are also in urgent need of different kinds of pension services, such as daily care, spiritual comfort and so on.The study shows that the social support of elderly people living alone in community L is insufficient. And the existing support is imbalance between supply and demand. The problem lies in the lack of social security, the policy system inside is different from the outside, the lack of community support for the elderly, the shortage of professional service manpower. Because of the terrible steadiness of school services, the instability of family and geographical relationship support, the influence of social culture, elderly people’s consumption concept and the traditional psychological help seeking, elderly people living alone cannot be satisfied in the daily care support, in spiritual comfort and in economic support.University community has rich resources for the elderly, can provide effective support for community home care for the elderly people living alone in community L, but it is short of effective connection and integration in reality, so that it provides a broad space for the intervention of social work. From the perspective of social work and based on the special needs of the elderly people living alone, the author puts forward some countermeasures and suggestions in multiple ways concerning to government, communities, schools, markets, family, friends, neighbors, individual and so on. It hopes to help the elderly people living alone to build a perfect social support network, and to provide reasonable and reliable support.