Intervention Study On Social Work Cases Of Social Support For The Urban Poverty-striken Elderly

The elderly suffering from exceptional poverty living in urban areas are the more vulnerable part within the disadvantaged group.Their pension situation is worrying.Although there are more and more attention and researches on the elderly across the academic community,few has specifically targeted the population of urban elderly in poverty.Rather,they are usually included in the “urban poverty-striken population” and are not given enough attention to their particularities.Further,there is a lack of concrete ideas and actions to solve their practical difficulties.This study is based on the “Residential Care Project for the Urban Poverty-striken Elderly”which went into two communities in Chengguan District of Lanzhou City to learn about the status of social support for the elderly in the process of home-based care through a sample of size 50.Based on the information acquired,the method of case social work was used to provide services for a destitute elderly person in the D community.By using the basic concepts and professional methods,this study tried to explore the ways and functions of case social work in resolving the difficulties of the poverty-stricken elderly and enhancing their social support system.12 cases were completed and the effects of pre-post test,case subject evaluation,social workers' reconsideration were observed,recorded,summarized and assessed.Conclusions are as follows:1.The status of elderly care and social support for the urban poverty-striken elderly is unpromising;2.Case social work has a certain amount of space and effect for intervention as for the construction of urban social support for the elderly;3.Full acceptance and appropriate emotional involvement are very important in the process of case work for the elderly;4.In the case work,the reality is more complicated than the original plan,thus everything should start from the most urgent needs of the case subject;5.The empathy effect was significantly reflected in the elderly people.Social workers are supposed to both actively use it while intervening and carefully handle it in terms of its negative reactions.At the same time,on the basis of understanding the inadequacies of the existing social policies to meet the need of social support for the urban poverty-stricken elderly and the problems at the policy implementation level,the author puts forward several suggestions for improving the social support for the elderly from the perspective of a social worker:The first is to increase the financial investment and improve the social security system;the second is to strengthen the community development and promote diversified home-based care services;the third is to strive for family support and enhance the relations in the neighborhood.