The Research On The Dilemma Of Senile People's Family Care In The City

Family Care is the kind of informal care service which is provided for the Senile people living at home. In the ancient times or modern, family care is the major way of taking care of senile people both in the city and the countryside. It is limited by the economic and social development and also influenced by the cultural tradition and the family love conception. In the process of the social transformation, what kind of dilemma the city old-age care faced, how to highlight the advantages, how to make use of the present resource to make up its disadvantages and how to share the responsibility of care are all worth thinking deeply and researching.The thesis uses the method of qualitative research, and it's also based on the experience of the twelve senile people and their twelve major caregivers through deep interview and participatory observation. The thesis also does some research on the people's demographic characteristics, the family and community (society) background as well as their life historyt to find the dilemma of senile people's family care. By analyzing the text, the paper has found four aspects of family care dilemma: (1) The human resources of family care are insufficient. The menifestations are as follows: First, the need of care by the spouse caregivers themselves can't be satisfied and they lack professional care knowledge and skills; second, faced with the stress from the work, family, society, their children have great difficulty taking care of their parents; third, relatives and neighbors are unable to provide care in a long term; last, compensated service requires the senile people of high expense and their service differs from each other. (2) Lacking financial and physical resource, such as economic capability, housing conditions and related services, which are restraining facts of family care; (3) Senile people's spiritual life is hard to fulfill, just by the family care. On the one hand, the senile widows/widowers and the empty nest olders are easy to feel lonely and particularly eager to enjoy family relationships and communicate with others; On the other hand, the senile people are short of cultural life and social participation. (4) The caregivers are exthusted and can't bear the heavy load in a long run. They are of low sleep quality and under physiologic pressure from sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion. They are under the great psychologic pressure from the concerns about the health of the senile people, from the torment that they and their families are facing the suffering of the illness. During the care process, they are also under the pressure from the family, work, the public as well as the society.In the discussion part, with the help of"Theory of Shared Function", the thesis also discussed the sharing of the responsibilities among the families, communities, formal organizations. In particular, the thesis discussed the role which the community played in the senile people care and the problems at present. In the aspects of finance, system, supervision, and service, the thesis also emphasizes the government's duties and obligations in the senile people care.The research discusses the topic creatively. First, based on the subjective experience of the family care from the senile people and their caregivers, we inspect the senile people's care problems in a brand new angle. Second, we not only research on the senile people, but also on their caregivers, and even when inspecting family care we take the caregivers'subjective experience into consideration, which is rare in the former research.