More people receive care at home with 'senior beds'

By ZHAO XINYING | China Daily | Updated:2021-02-24 09:00

The creation of"household senior care beds" has helped reduce the burden of takingcare of the elderly in many Chinese families, a senior civil affairs officialsaid at a news conference on Tuesday.

Gao Xiaobing,vice-minister of civil affairs, said people usually spend their retirement atone of three locations: at home, in a community or at a senior careorganization.

Most seniors inChina prefer to spend their retirement at home with their children andrelatives.

However, as theelderly population grows and the number of elderly people who have lost theability to take care of themselves increases, burdens on Chinese families aremounting, she said.

To solve theproblem, the ministry, together with the Ministry of Finance, has piloted theinnovative "household senior care bed" project across the country,Gao said.

In the project,senior care organizations help families to transform the home environment andfacilities into ones suitable for elderly people.

Instead ofspending their lives at senior care centers, elderly people stay at home andstaff members from the centers visit them regularly to offer care and otherservices.

"Forelderly people, they can not only receive services and care without leaving theenvironment they are familiar with, but also save the cost of going toexpensive senior care centers," Gao said.

Organizationscan save the cost of land and buildings. Research has showed that the cost oftransforming a senior care bed at home is only one-fifth that of establishing abed at a senior care center, she added.

In Nanjing,capital of Jiangsu province, more than 6,000 senior care beds were developedlast year, with that capacity equaling 50 medium-sized senior care centers, Gaosaid.

She added theministry takes the project very seriously, and will set standards for andstrengthen supervision and management of household senior care beds.

More policieswill also be put into place to support the development of the new-style seniorcare service.

In recent years,the senior care industry in China has developed quickly. Li Jiheng, minister ofcivil affairs, said at the news conference that during the 13th Five-Year Planperiod (2016-20), the ministry spent 5 billion yuan ($770 million) on pilotingnew senior care services in 203 areas.

By the end oflast year, there were 38,000 senior care organizations nationwide, markinggrowth of 37.2 percent from late 2015. The number of senior care beds incommunities and all kinds of senior care centers reached 8.24 million－up 22.5 percent in the same period.