By Qiu Yue & Li Fan, China Development Research Foundation

Research Report, No.157, 2019 (Total 5657) 2019-9-9

Abstract: Home-based elderly care service is an inevitable choice to deal with the issue of aging population. The quality and effect of community service rests on the fact whether it could meet the needs of the old people. However, China’s home-based elderly care is still subject to the lack of service integration and the absence of community support, imposing great challenges on its advancement. Based on the survey on the practice of developed countries such as Japan, the U.S., and the U.K. in relevant fields, this paper gives an analysis of the key issues relating to China’s home-based elderly care and proposes three policy options for shoring up the integration of community service and bolstering the weak spots of at-home elderly care. First, a unified and demand-oriented assessment system and service classification standard focusing on old people need to be established and pick up speed; second, relevant departments need to build a management system on elderly care and flesh out the qualification certification and the recruitment of personnel involved in elderly care so as to exercise an across-the-board supervision over the entire course of elderly care; and third, a packaged payment system needs to be explored and the incentive mechanism for service integration needs to be strengthened which concentrates on the needs of the disabled and the semi-ablebodied people.

Key words: home-based elderly care, community service, service integration