Research On The Community Service For Adult Intellectual Disabilities

In 2005, Shanghai built up Sunshine Homes for the Persons with Mental Retardation in most townships and urban sub-districts, offering free day care and training. Then this service was expanded around the country, becoming the main form of the community service for intellectual disabilities. So far, there is more than 200 Sunshine Homes in Shanghai, and the service has been carried out for ten years.A field investigation method is adopted in this research. As a service steering group member and volunteer, The writer participated in all kinds of services and activities offered by the Sunshine Homes of District D in 5 months, to obtain the first-hand materials.This research analyzes the service objects recruitment, staff, content, form, supervision and estimate of Sunshine Home service, and suggests that the low degree of demand response, the deficiency of professionalism in the service delivery, and the imperfect mangement system of archives construction, service hand-over and staff training are the significant problems of Sunshine Home service.This research suggests that the above problems are mainly coursed by the intervention of government requirements in the service goal, the vacancy of supervision and evaluation institution's professional function and the limited service capability of Sunshine Homes. In response, this article puts forward four pieces of advice on the management of Sunshine Home, which includes enhancing the response to clients' demand, improving the service ability, establishing normalized information feedback mechanism, and reviewing service system periodically.