The Elderly Enjoy Nursing Services at Home

By Zhang Yanli

Hongkou is one of the downtown areas with the highest degree of aging in Shanghai. Thus, the District Government has attached great importance to serving the elderly over the years, constantly improved the safeguard mechanism, and promoted sustainable and healthy development of the district’s aging cause.

As one of the important measures to cement community-based elderly-care services, Liangcheng Xincun Sub-district has recently fully upgraded the elderly-care services that have been carried out for many years under the guidance of the District Civil Affairs Bureau, and has introduced different service packs for home-based elderly care, so that the elderly here enjoy a variety of elderly-care services.

Relying on qualified elderly-care service institutions, the upgraded home-based elderly-care services are accessed into the old people’s home, so that the elderly can enjoy professional elderly-care services offered by professional institutions at home.

"I can enjoy door-to-door services in terms of haircut and cleaning air conditioner, and get the help to call a taxi," said 88-year-old Mr. Sun, who lives in Shuidian Community. In early July, Mr. Sun bought the home-based elderly-care service pack, which solved the dining problem, and offered 27 services in 8 categories, such as family administration and personal care.

Originally, Mr. Sun living alone had three meals delivered by his son living a few kilometers away to his home. "I'm at work, and my wife is taking care of children, so I need to take care of my dad before or after work every day," said Mr. Sun's son who visits Mr. Sun every day. But, most of the time Mr. Sun is alone at home, which makes his son quite anxious. Fortunately, there are push-to-delivery services and emergency services in the pack he bought. Once Mr. Sun triggers the call device installed at the head of the bed, the staff can talk to him in real time and come to his home within 30 minutes.

In addition to enjoying door-to-door services, Mr. Sun will participate in all kinds of entertainment activities suitable for the elderly, and utilize rehabilitation equipment for exercise and so on at the Elderly-care Home in his community every day. "My father, who used to read books and newspapers at home alone, now takes part in activities and chats with others every day. He is more outgoing, now I feel more relaxed. This service pack is really great," said Mr. Sun's son.

To develop the service packs is to enable the elderly to enjoy professional services without leaving their homes, and to enable their family members to take a rest.

In order to promote the upgrading of the Elderly-care Home’s services, the Sub-district has formulated suitable service packs with the third-party organization according to different demands of the elderly proposed by the Ma Wei Elderly-care Studio and the Elderly Office set up by the Sub-district. Divided into three categories, the service pack is by now priced from RMB998 to RMB2,395 for every old person every month.

"Some of the services can be adjusted according to the actual needs of the elderly, such as accompanying for the medical treatment. If some do not have this demand, it can be converted into other services," said a head of the Sub-district.

It is introduced that the service pack can be matched with a personalized service menu for residents. The Sub-district calls together the chiefs and directors of the surrounding residential areas to hold a special meeting to publicize the service pack, to find out the old people who are suitable to or intent to buy the pack, and to purposefully introduce the pack to the elderly and their families door to door, in order to make the residents here master the contents of this pack.

So far, 11 old people from the Sub-district have signed up to buy the service packs, and the third-party professional elderly-care institutions have established health files for them. Besides, the Sub-district will keep boosting the packs, so that more old people here can enjoy multilevel and diversified elderly-care services.