Social services not ready for aging population

(Ecns.cn) -- Chinese society is ageing and that trend is accelerating, experts agreed at a recent symposium on the aging populations of China, Japan and the ROK.

In about 20 years, metropolises such as Shanghai and Beijing will face tremendous pressure from ageing populations, not only in terms of pension issues but also social care systems, according to the Xinmin Weekly.

A lack of comfortable nursing homes and the growing expectations of senior citizens point to an urgent need to develop various kinds of old-age support programs, the magazine added, which would hopefully provide services with more respect and dignity and guarantee a better quality of life.

A good model

Ms. Zhou lives in a fancy apartment at a widely lauded nursing home in Shanghai, where she says she is very happy (despite the fact that none of her relatives have visited since her husband passed away).

Zhou maintains a tight daily schedule centered on entertaining herself, a regimen that includes swimming, dancing and playing badminton, ping pong and mahjong. Thanks to its complete set of facilities and excellent healthcare services, the nursing home makes her life very colorful.

The home is called Qinheyuan, a comprehensive community for senior citizens which occupies the high end of the spectrum for such facilities in Shanghai.

Yet according to Wang Bo, deputy director of the research center at Qinheyuan, the home does not focus only on the wealthy; its target consumers are elders who are open and have high expectations of life in later years, but are not necessarily rich, he said.

Most of the home's residents are retired engineers, professors, doctors and civil servants who care more about the kind of people they live with, rather than where they are, Wang added.

The nursing home also tries to satisfy all requests. For example, some of the elders like quiet, so Qinheyuan has opened a class for photography enthusiasts, art devotees and fishing lovers.

Many agree that Qinheyuan is a good role model for China's old-age support programs, and that its sense of responsibility is what society needs overall.

Poor selection

Zhang Guoqiang, now over 70, is chairman of a private enterprise in Shanghai. After feeling exhausted by a recent business trip to Dubai, he decided it was time to let his daughter manage the business, according to Xinmin Weekly.

Because his son migrated to Australia, Zhang had considered settling there after retirement, but found that he could not part with his motherland. However, when he considered moving into a nursing home, he found few institutions here that could meet his demands.

Normal nursing homes are too underdeveloped in terms of services and amenities, and they don't have pleasant environments, complained Zhang, who has been more satisfied with sanatoriums built for government officials and military officers.

Many Chinese senior citizens share the same feelings as Zhang.

In recent years, an increasing number of Shanghai's elders have chosen to spend their twilight years in nearby Zhejiang Province or on the island of Hainan. But a yearning for their hometown and a lack of good medical resources in those locations have created problems in Shanghai, where many of them return for healthcare.

There are 631 registered nursing homes with 101,900 beds in Shanghai, but compared to the facilities, poorly-trained nursing home staff is a more worrying issue, said Peng Jianming, an official from a local bureau of civil affairs.

And most of the elderly still prefer to stay at home, even if there is no one to take care of them, noted Peng, who warned that spending the rest of their lives alone is a very dangerous choice.

More training needed

By the end of 2011, Shanghai had 3.48 million people aged 60 or above, which means one in four Shanghai residents is now a senior, the highest percentage of aging people in the nation, according to the latest official statistics released this month.

By the end of 2015, Shanghai plans to add 25,000 beds to its old-age homes, bringing the total to about 125,000. It also plans to ensure that 300,000 seniors, or seven percent of the total, enjoy care at home.

However, facilities are far from sufficient to guarantee happy twilight years, and the government needs to put more attention on the training of staff to improve the services provided at nursing homes.

With life expectancy increasing in China, the aging process presents society with enormous challenges. Apart from providing sufficient beds in nursing homes, the government must also promote programs to help families and communities support the elderly.