Research On Community Support For The Elderly In University Community From The Perspective Of Social Work

Ageing problem has becoming an increasing social concern and a considerable progress has been made in the research and practice of gerontological social work in the context of population ageing. However, the researchers and practitioners of social work lack enough attention to such a group as "the elderly in college". When working in a Social Work Service Center of NJ City named "S" as a trainee and providing community service for the retirees of N University, the researcher found that the elderly in the university community also faced particular ageing problem due to their specificity, although they belong to the strong group among elders. And social work, which aims at achieving human dignity and values, should response to those issues.This research reviews some relative studies on the university community, community support for the elderly and the practices about social work involving in community service for the aged at home and abroad, and tries to explore the problem of elderly-support in university community in the framework of hierarchy of needs theory and social support theory. The researcher analyses this problem based on the investigation by participatory observation and interviewing 24 people, including 18 retirees of N University and 6 staffs working in the service providers for elders. With a view to the experience of researcher’s internship, the research tries to figure out the effects that the community support for the elderly has on helping solve the ageing problem in university community, as well as the existing problems, and to summarize and explore the pattern of applying social work to elderly-support service in university community.The research states that the elderly in college distinguishes from ordinary elderly group in the aspect of demographic characters and their psychological and behavioral characters. According to the hierarchy of needs theory, based on the characters of the elderly in university community, this research divides the elderly-support needs into such five levels as daily care, home safety, spiritual consolation, entertainment and social participation, among which daily care is the most basic and urgent need while the needs of spiritual consolation and social participation are also significant. Applying social support theory enables the researcher to analyze the current situation of the elderly-support service’s supply for the retirees in college in four dimensions including society, work unit, family and community. However, the situation is not promising. Nursing institutions for the aged in social dimension are not accepted by most elders. The supply of the daily care service for the aged from their work units is unsatisfactory. The care and company from elders’ children is rather deficient. Social organizations in community find it hard to gain elders’ trust. Therefore, although the retirees of university have elderly-support service’s supply from multiple dimensions and subjects, they still primarily rely on their work units. As a result, their needs, especially in daily care and spiritual consolation, are not satisfied sufficiently. However, in the case of the community service for the elderly in N University, social organizations set up service station with the university’s official assistance, making up for the deficiency of elderly-support needs such as daily care, spiritual consolation and social participation. Based on the practices in the community service for the aged in N University, the researcher tries to summarize the special pattern of applying social work to elderly-support service in university community, including values and principles, intervention strategies, methods and skills, etc.