Analysis On Government's Guiding Of Social Organizations On Participating In The Elderly Care Services

A country having the largest number of aging population with fastest growing speed,China has entered an aging society since 2000 according to the definition by United Nations,i.e.,a country or region should be regarded as an aging society once the proportion of people above 65 years old reaches 7 percent,or people over 60 years old accounts for more than 10 percent of the total population.According to the forecast laid out by the National 13th-five-year Plan for the Undertaking of Aging and Plan for Construction of System on Elderly Care Services,from 2015 to 2035,China will enter a rapid aging period,during which the elderly population will increase from 212 million to 418 million,accounting for 29%of the total.By 2020,the number of people over 60 years old will be increased to about 255 million,accounting for about 17.8%of the total;the number of the elderly will add up to 29 million,empty-nest and elderly people living alone will grow to 118 million,therefore the elderly dependency ratio will be raised to 28 percent.The issue of aging has become a major strategic one that concerns the overall development of the country and the well-being of hundreds of millions of people.The aging in China is quite different from that in the developed countries,featuring unprepared aging and aging before getting rich.Right now,the elderly care service has lots of deficiencies,such as lack of scientific plan in system construction,lack of reasonable industrial layout,lenient implementation of standard of management and supervision,lack of pragmatism in resource allocation,and imbalanced urban and rural development.After the new term of government in 2013,we've got new job requirements in innovating the social governance system and stimulating the vitality of the social organizations.Therefore,the participation of the social organization in the elderly care services becomes an indispensable task of speeding up the innovation of the social governance system.Practice has proved that social organizations have many advantages in providing elderly care services:providing more diversified services,stronger ability in integrating resources,and stronger publicity intensity.Currently,Chinese government has introduced a series of laws and policies to guide social organizations to participate in elderly care services,while Jiangsu Province has adopted some distinctive initiatives.By analyzing the aging and elderly care services of Jiangsu,this thesis sums up the major achievements of social organization participating in the elderly care services,playing the crucial role of new force in basic safeguards,pacesetters in integration of medical treatment and elderly care,vanguard in service layering,booster of upgrading quality and efficiency.However,there are still too many bottleneck problems for the social organizations to participate in elderly care services,such as constraints for private institutions,too obvious advantages of public institutions,low degree of market-oriented services.Therefore,we have to emphasize the guiding role of government in this process.The UK is one of the earliest countries in the world to establish a social security system and one of the countries that have established a social service system in early stage.In the 1990s,the UK government launched a quasi-market mechanism in the field of social welfare services,resulting in a private and social sector-dominated supply side.Therefore,the UK could be regarded as one of the pioneering countries in guiding the social organizations to participate in the social elderly care services by the government.Japan has entered the peak of fertility since the Second World War and has entered the aging society since the 1970s.Now it has become a country with the highest degree of aging in Asia.The Japanese government and all walks of society have continuously reforming the mode of elderly care services,transforming government functions,and guiding the institutional care of the elderly,which has become a core part of Japanese elderly care service system.This is also an importance manifestation of the government's guiding role on the participation of the social organization in the elderly care services.Located in economic core circle of the Yangtze River Delta,Jiangsu is renowned for its relatively developed economy,culture and aging society of high degree and the social capital is very active in Jiangsu.Therefore,it's quite scientific and forward-looking in taking Jiangsu as a case study.This thesis adopts the methods of literature research,comparative research,case study and interview.Based on the theories of new public service,government failure,market failure,welfare pluralism and resource dependence,this thesis analyzes the necessity of the government's guiding role in the participation of the social organization in the elderly care services.This thesis summarizes the relevant laws and documents issued by the Chinese government and introduced the distinctive approaches taken by government of Jiangsu.By illustrating the achievement and challenges,as well as experiences from the UK and Japan,this thesis proposes counter-measures for the government's guiding on the participation of the social organization in the elderly care services in four aspects:improving the top-level design,providing policy and fund guarantee,guiding the social organizations to strengthen self-construction,and enhancing international cooperation.