An Explorative Study Of Homecare Pluralism Practice In Guangzhou

This study found that homecare is turning to pluralism inGuangzhou. Four main providers of homecare (namely,government, voluntary, commercial, and informalorganizations) form four different service patterns, whichare Government Department Providing Pattern, VoluntaryDepartment Providing Pattern, Commercial DepartmentProviding Pattern, and Informal Department ProvidingPattern respectively. The present study began at analyzingthe effect of these four service patterns throughquantitative methods, and then sought to confirm theessential impact factors of them through qualitativeanalyses. After that, the author summarized thecharacteristics of the four departments and the superiorityand weakness of the four service patterns and exploredhow to conduct the homecare pluralism in Guangzhou.Besides, this study also found that there are somesignificant differences among the four service patterns,which are caused by three factors: resources and usage ofthe departments, ideas of the departments anddepartment’ relationships. Ideas, resources and usage factors affect the homecare performance directly. Besides,ideas also influence the usage of resources, and thedepartments’ relationships. The departments’ relationshipsaffect the service performance indirectly through resourcesusing. Therefore, the study concluded that the fourdepartments must play rational roles to make best use ofthe advantages and bypass the disadvantages.According to the above analyses, the study demonstratedthat Guangzhou may develop its homecare to a pluralprovision mechanism, to transfer much more providingfrom government department to the other departments,and take voluntary department as the main provider.Simultaneously, solidify Cooperative and Complementaryrelationships among the four departments. Establishing aplural provision mechanism needs cooperation and effort inmany perspectives, the study also gave some advices onhow to establish the plural provision mechanism. The pluralprovision mechanism can not only imply to homecare inGuangzhou, but also to other social services, even to allsocial services in the whole country.