Beijing Issues Regulation for Live-in Carers for the Elderly
December 27, 2013
The Regulation for Live-in Elderly Caretaker Practitioners classifies the position into three grades and designates different skill requirements for the different grades.
One requirement for first-grade carers is being capable of taking blood pressure and pulse rate measurements. Middle-grade carers are required to be capable of giving cold and hot compresses to the elderly who have limited ability to take care of themselves and they must also be familiar with drug names and suggested dosages. Higher-grade carers must help the family members to give rehabilitation training to the elderly who cannot take care of themselves, and have a good knowledge of the names of drugs their clients take and the dosages.
Association President Li Dajing said the regulation was based on representations from organizations including, among others, the Commission of Commerce, the Office of Municipal Associations and the China National Committee on Ageing.
An insider of the domestic service industry said carers for the elderly were in great demand but many of them lacked professional skills.
Li said they will improve the training and certificate system for the profession next year in order to set standards for domestic service companies.
China has the world's largest population of citizens over the age of 65 and in coming decades their numbers are expected to grow rapidly. Meanwhile, China's population is ageing at one of the fastest rates in the world. By the middle of the century, more than 450 million people will be over 60 years of age.
China lacks both the facilities and the staff to care adequately for the elderly, says Du Peng, director of the Institute of Gerontology at Renmin University of China - the only program of its kind in China. "We have 4 million beds available, one carer for every three elderly. We should have more than a million carers. If in the future we will have 30 million elderly then we need 10 million carers," she said. "But at the moment in China every year only 6,000 gerontology professionals are being certified."
At present most of China's nursing homes are state owned, but through incentives to private enterprises, caregivers and stipends for the elderly, the government is looking to shake up the market.
"When I was still in school I thought about where I would work afterwards, and at the time the government was issuing policies to help private institutions … there were many privately run institutions available, so there were more to choose from," Li Xinyue said.
In addition to allowing more foreign and private investment in elderly care, the government is testing ways to encourage caregivers to seek advanced training and keep certified nurses in the sector.
"It is a bit like the reform of China's economic system 30 years ago, when it was mostly state-owned enterprises and there was a break with that and a promotion of economic development. Now we are seeing a similar thing with the breakdown of the bottleneck," said Peng.
As more elderly Chinese turn to nursing homes for care, authorities hope investors see profit in the country's demographic challenges, and increase the numbers of the 400,000 nursing homes that now are mostly state run.
(Source: beijing.qianlong.com/Translated and edited by womenofchina.cn)
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