Quality caretaking for the elderly a major challenge
A lack of competent caretakers for elderly people is a major obstacle in offering sufficient and quality community services to this growing part of the Shanghai population, city legislators were told on Monday.
"Elderly care has become a labor-intensive industry, and the government should step up to retain the labor force," said Gu Jun, head of Kaicheng, the largest company providing the service in Jing'an District.
Low incomes, a lack of training and low social esteem are considered major problems in this regard, Gu and non-governmental organizations and government officials said during a consultative meeting with representatives of the Shanghai People's Congress.
Gu said caretakers currently need only a certificate for medical caretaking to be employed to serve elderly people at home with no further training required, and due to the fact that many caretakers resign for other jobs after a certain time, the caretaking providers generally consider it not cost-effective to pay for on-job training.
“We advise that a complete registration, classification and training system be established between the city and district governments and the employers so as to regulate the services,” he said.
Fang Pei’er, who has been running her non-governmental organization for elderly services Qingfeng for 15 years, said her workers who serve elderly people at home are expected to get paid a monthly salary of only 3,500 yuan (US$490) next year, and she herself as the director is paid only 3,900 yuan a month. A local home helper job is better paid.
“Most of my workers are from out of town or are retired, so that they can almost make do with the low payments, but this is not going to last and we need younger and more competent people to do the job,” she said.
Fang called on the government to invest more money in elderly services.
“Last year our elderly service stations provided services 750,000 times, but we had only 1.68 million yuan of investment from the government,” she said.
Liu Xie, vice head of Jing’an District, said caretakers for elderly people not only should be equipped with knowledge in physical caretaking, but also have training in psychology to communicate with the people they serve.
The aging of the city as a whole requires ever more quality in-home services for the elderly population. In Jing’an District, one of the “oldest” of all Shanghai districts, it’s expected that the number of residents at least 60 years old will account for over 40 percent of the entire population by 2020.
The dire need for elderly services was spelled out by Shen Jufen, head of the Sanle residents’ committee in the Jiangning Road subdistrict of Jing’an. In the area she and her colleagues administer, 2,819 of the 6,503 residents with hukou, or registered residency, are over 60 years old.
“Most of the elderly people choose to spend their old age at home or at a senior facility near their home, but senior facilities in urban districts prove to be unaffordable to many and their vacancies are indeed limited,” she said.
Shen said the residents’ committee is increasingly short of hands to serve the elderly people.
“They rely on community volunteers and the residents’ committee too much, and in some cases, their children are not inclined to even pay for their medication,” she said.