First, the professional road and its dilemma of the construction of the senior service talent team
In the traditional period, old-age care was placed in the family and local society, and the children with their own blood kinship and ethical responsibilities assumed the responsibility of family care, integrating emotional, ethical and functional, which is commonly known as "raising children and preventing old age". In this sense, as long as it conforms to human nature and ethical norms, it is a good life.
Under the new situation, with the aging of the population and the weakening of the family pension function, who provides the pension service has gradually become a very urgent practical problem. One theory is that strangers who have no ethical relationship provide pension services, but this is not only not in line with the mainland's pension cultural tradition, but also faces new problems, such as how to ensure and supervise the quality of pension services.
In recent years, the reason why some live-in nannies have abused the elderly has aroused heated public discussions reflects everyone's distrust of elderly care workers as strangers. In this case, it seems necessary to strengthen the specialization and standardization of social pension services and promote the high-quality development of pension service personnel, which can solve the problem of people's trust to a large extent.
However, the core of the question is, who will pay for the human and administrative costs of providing elderly care services?
In the context of the market economy, who buys and who pays, the labor cost and management cost of the pension service supply are naturally paid by the buyer. If the buyer pays less, then buy some basic pension services, such as meal assistance services, cleaning services, etc. The buyer pays more, and the purchased pension service is naturally more high-end and humane, and even private customized pension services.
"Taikang Home" is the most typical in this regard, it is aimed at those who have strong purchasing power and are willing to live in nursing institutions, employ a professional and professional elderly care service talent team, and provide them with high-quality social pension services. If more and more people directly purchase pension services and the demand for pension services becomes more and more diversified, this will naturally promote the high-level development of the pension service talent market, thus forming a benign "demand-supply" cycle mechanism. However, at present, only in urban areas with relatively high economic income levels can there be signs of such marketization of pension services.
So, in reality, how many elderly people can afford and are willing to buy old-age care services, especially in the vast rural areas.
In rural Henan, it was found that the monthly fixed income of the elderly is only the national basic pension, plus some meager income obtained from agricultural production, and can have an annual income of up to 10,000 yuan (including red envelopes sent by children and descendants). After deducting various daily living expenses and supporting children to go to the city, there is not much left, let alone buying social pension services.
We summarize the life of the elderly in North China in their later years as "having a house to live in, clothes to wear, and food to eat, but there is no money to spend". Shangyu in Zhejiang Province is a relatively wealthy area, and the property income and wage income of the elderly in rural areas are relatively high.
Even so, only after they lose their ability to take care of themselves and their children are not around, do they have to spend money to hire a "familiar aunt" from the local area to take care of the elderly and take care of food and daily life. This is the reason why many pension service institutions/enterprises are reluctant to go to rural areas to promote business, that is, the elderly farmers have no money, and the willingness to live in pension institutions is also very low.
With limited ability to pay, we have entered a moderately aging society, and some rural areas have even entered a severely aging society. The huge, urgent and diverse demand for social pension services and the limited ability to pay constitute a set of contradictions that cannot be bypassed.
What we urgently need to explore is a path for the construction of senior service talents in line with the current national conditions, not just a purely market-oriented professional senior service talent team.
Second, the localization path of the construction of the pension service talent team
Here is an example of the construction of rural pension service talent team. "Growing old before getting rich" is particularly evident in rural areas, where the elderly have low incomes and low savings, and their demand for basic old-age services is very urgent. In this case, the first thing to consider in the construction of the pension service talent team is "low cost, high efficiency and easy supervision".
The "home care and home service" model explored by Daijia Village, Xinxian County, Henan Province has great reference significance. Daiji Village selects 8 elderly care workers from the left-behind women living in the village all the year round, and these nursing staff regularly provide basic old-age services such as cleaning, meals, medical assistance, walking assistance and visits to 7-8 disabled and semi-disabled elderly people according to the principle of proximity, and has achieved very obvious pension and social effects.
The operating cost of the "home-based elderly care door-to-door service" model in Daiji Village is relatively low, and the treatment of each elderly care worker is 750 yuan/month. In order to increase the wages of elderly care workers, the Daiji Village Association for the Elderly also gives a monthly subsidy of 400 yuan, and in addition, some public welfare posts are tilted towards them. In rural areas where there are not enough opportunities for work, although the income is not high, the opportunities are rare, and it is highly compatible with their family livelihoods, which are "male and female", and the stability is relatively high.
In addition, the principle of proximity has largely solved the problems of the same language, cultural commonality and convenience of supervision of elderly care workers, and the principle of affection in the acquaintance society still plays a role in the process of elderly care. As for how to carry out home-based elderly care services, a local person engaged in elderly care service management said a very classic sentence, "How our sisters take care of their parents, how to take care of these elderly people." What she means is that the pension service does not have to be "high", but to provide them with basic social pension services with feelings.
In accordance with the principle of "low cost, high efficiency and easy supervision", the construction of rural pension service talent team has a relatively clear development idea. The core is to excavate and cultivate a team of senior service talents in the hometown, such as excavating and cultivating elderly care workers from left-behind women, returning migrant workers and healthy young elderly people, and excavating and cultivating elderly service management talents from the "middle peasants", so as to break the artificial restrictions such as age, education and identity. On this basis, the civil affairs department will take the lead in providing them with professional training. In the process of investigation, we found that some pension service institutions follow this path to tap and cultivate their own nursing staff, and the effect is very good.
3. Summary
In the face of the increasingly large, urgent and diversified demand for social pension services, it is time and urgent to strengthen the construction of pension service talents. In this situation, we should be based on the present, based on reality, grasp the main contradictions, and integrate various favorable factors to explore and build a "low-cost, high-efficiency and easy-to-supervise" pension service talent team.
In addition to that, we need to make a difference in two other tracks. One is to continuously improve the awareness level of the whole society on the aging society through professional book publishing, public lectures, news reports and film and television creation, and cultivate everyone into a "potential pension service talent". The other is to provide a more friendly and positive policy environment for the construction of senior service talents, such as through open professional skills competitions and honor reward mechanisms, etc., to continuously improve the professional identity and social reputation of elderly care workers, and attract more people to support or engage in this industry.
All in all, we need to build a gradient pension service talent team to meet the needs of different types of pension services at different levels. Among them, the top priority is to create a group of "low-cost, high-efficiency and easy-to-supervise" pension service talent team, rather than building a high-standard pension service talent team at the beginning.
Source: "New Township" WeChat public account
Author: Su Yunxun
Editor: Hu Liang
[Statement: This number is an official public welfare account to serve the decision-making of governments at all levels, enterprises and institutions, and this article is reprinted for the purpose of conveying more information. If there is a source labeling error or other inaccuracies, please contact us. We will correct it in a timely manner. Thank you]