What Does a Carer Do?

Community care refers to social workers mobilizing community resources, using informal support networks, and combining support services and facilities provided by formal services to allow those in need to be taken care of at home or in the community and provided to them in a familiar environment Care and help model of welfare services. Community care can be regarded as a social service network. The informal network and various formal social service agencies form this network.

Community care model

Right!

Community care refers to social workers mobilizing community resources, using informal support networks, and combining support services and facilities provided by formal services to allow those in need to be taken care of at home or in the community and provided to them in a familiar environment Care and help model of welfare services. Community care can be regarded as a social service network. The informal network and various formal social service agencies form this network.

Chinese name

Community care model

Nature

mode

Features

The formation of community care concepts is more complicated

Advantages

Formation is more complicated

Because the concept of community care is more complex, there is still no accepted explanation for it. The concept of community care is defined by different people. Different people have different understandings of it: The British Community Care White Paper of 1989 states that "community care" refers to problems related to old age, mental illness, mental disorders or physical and sensory dysfunction. Those in need provide services and support to enable them to live as independently as possible in a "family-like" environment in their home or community.

According to Bulmer, community care refers to resources available outside of formal institutions, and in particular to consider informal relationships such as family, friends or neighborhoods as a tool for providing care.

According to P. Arams, community care is "the assistance, support or care provided by a non-professional in a home or work environment."

Wan Yuwei believes that the basic spirit and concept of serving the community is in common with normal life. They all hope that those who need to be cared for will receive appropriate support or information services so that they can live in their own homes with dignity and independence. In a home-like community.

"Community care" is a concept that countries around the world have been paying close attention to in recent years. The concept of this concept has taken a long time and a complicated process. The emergence of community care originated in the 1950s, and it was a new movement conceived by many problems of the residential care services in western countries at that time.

Community care was originally proposed for inpatient care. During the heyday of the implementation of high welfare policies, welfare states such as the United Kingdom implemented inpatient care for the helpless elderly and those with mental disabilities. That is, the state and the government focused on supporting and caring for these elderly people through the establishment of large-scale welfare homes. And mental patients, the government has spent huge sums of money to hire full-time staff to provide support and care for them. After the Second World War, this kind of welfare state policy pursued by the United Kingdom, that is, the government paid for and paid for those who are helpless and have difficulties in daily life, is effective, especially for those who cannot take care of themselves This is especially true for the elderly. Britain has vigorously promoted and promoted such residential care, and some countries and regions have followed suit.

Over time, in the early 1950s, Western societies, such as the United Kingdom, began to focus on some of the dehumanizing consequences of long-term hospital care for the elderly and people with mental illness. At the same time, some people in the community have noticed the adverse consequences of long-term hospitalization for the elderly and people with disabilities. The main problems with this type of inpatient care are:

1. Inpatient care places enormous financial pressure on the government.

2. Inpatient care goes against the "normalization" of people's living environment. These large welfare homes are often separated from the living communities of the caregivers, separated from the communities in which the recipients live, and placed in an abnormal environment where these people actually lose The conditions of communication and normal social life, and gradually lose the ability to re-adapt to society. Sociologists point out that isolated hospital care has actually become an important cause of illness for residents.

3 Some of the dehumanizing consequences of inpatient care: Staff in large institutions often develop a way of controlling or even abusing living members. Large institutions tend to emphasize the needs of the organization to keep it running smoothly, rather than the bureaucracy of serving the occupants. For example, some inpatients receive inhuman treatment, living in welfare homes is not good for children's psychological growth, disrespect for inpatients, and deprivation of freedom and choice.

Under the combined influence of the above factors, human rights-loving British society has issued a call for "returning inpatients to the community", allowing clients to live as normal as possible at home or in the community. The British government is advocating community care, giving up the idea of centralized residential care, encouraging grass-roots communities to function, and helping and caring for the elderly and mentally handicapped. In this context, the concept of "community care" came into being. It can be seen that the initial concept of community care was mainly related to the "non-hospitalization" campaign.

From the 1960s to the 1970s, with the rise of welfarism, national governments in western societies assumed more and more social services. For example, the British government provides a wide range of inclusive services for the community, including community activity centers, elderly apartments, home care, home services, respite offices, and elderly homes. It can be said that "from the cradle to the grave" has been involved To meet the needs of people at all levels of society at different levels.

However, due to the continuous expansion of government functions, it has brought about various problems, such as financial crisis and bureaucratic rigidity. Community care has also been linked to the degovernment movement. Since the 1980s, the Thatcher government has been faced with an increasingly heavy burden of social welfare and social security expenditures. It has continuously adjusted welfare policies and adopted a series of reform measures. Its social services have also shifted from residential care. In order to focus on community care, the government tries to reduce the role of local government service providers, tries to encourage the development of more informal services and privatized services, and advocates that the resources and decision-making power of social services should be decentralized to the community level, and the provision of services Should be undertaken by the government and non-governmental organizations and voluntary groups, and even further vigorously mobilize relatives, friends and neighbors to provide informal care to those in need in the community.

Community care, as a social service concept and strategy, has formed a certain model after decades of advocacy and promotion. Community care advocates keeping those in need in the community where they originally lived, and providing them with a variety of formal social services and informal support systems, and working to improve their quality of life in the community environment. It is a social work model advocated under the policy changes of the welfare state, and it is also a way for countries to promote social services.

Community care usually provides care and support services for a group of people in need in the society, promotes the care of the people in need in the community, assists them in many ways, and directly supports any individual and people in need during the crisis. family. Specifically, community care clients include:

(1) The public-including policy makers, professionals, neighbors, friends, etc.

(2) Severe elderly, weak and disabled-there are vulnerable groups in the community that need to be taken care of, such as the elderly, children, and mental patients.

(3) People and families in crisis situations-including elderly people living alone, single-parent families, chronic patients, mildly and moderately mentally handicapped people, and ex-mentally ill persons. They have been in crisis for a long time and may worsen at any time and need social assistance.

(4) Caregiver-long-term care work puts them under a lot of pressure, physical and mental fatigue, physical and psychological impact, and social assistance is also needed.

(1) Assist the client to integrate into the community normally; provide the client with care in a normalized environment and way that the client is familiar with, and correct the problems for the client caused by the institutional care.

(2) Emphasize the role of informal care; pay attention to the use of the combination of informal networks and formal networks in the community to provide help and services to clients.

(3) Give play to the positive role of social capital in social support networks to avoid social exclusion caused by it.

(4) Advocate the establishment of a community of mutual care; carry forward the spirit of community mutual assistance and build a community life of mutual respect and love.

British scholar Walker pointed out that there are three main implementation strategies of community care: care in the community, Care by the community, and care for the community ). It should be said that these three meanings only reflect part of the overall meaning of community care. Community care should be a combination of the above three meanings. In fact, it is a way to support the community and fully tap the various resources in the community through the community. Comprehensive implementation strategies for the care of recipients.

Care in the community

1. Definition. Care in the community refers to services performed by leaving some clients in the community, that is, vulnerable people who need and rely on outside care, in small service agencies or residences in the community (that is, government and non-governmental (Small, professional service organizations established by service organizations in the community)

Get professional care. The core of "care in the community" is to emphasize the "non-institutionalization" of services, develop community-based treatment and service facilities, technologies and plans, return caregivers to the community for care, and live in the community environment they are familiar with To help them integrate into community life

The services provided are closer to people's normal lives, thereby avoiding the negative consequences of the indifferent, impersonal and isolated stylized professional care of large care institutions in the past.

At present, communities in our country have gradually established various types of community care institutions, such as community activity centers, homes for the elderly, women's homes, care homes for the elderly, and so on. For example, the New Resident Women's House established in a community provides information, rights protection, health care, assistance and other services for foreign women, and plays a role of communication, publicity, training, and services, making women's homes as foreign women Places to communicate ideas, vent emotions, improve quality, increase self-confidence, and solve problems.

2. Service form

There are several types of services in community care:

(1) Relocate the caregivers to their families in the communities they are familiar with, and supplement them with community support services such as housework assistants, community nurses, and community centers.

(2) Transform large institutions in the community into small institutions closer to the community, such as shelters for the elderly, small children's homes, etc.

(3) Move large institutions far from the urban area back to the community, so that the service target has the opportunity to contact the community, and it is convenient for relatives and friends to visit and meet.

Care by the community

1. definition. "Care by the community" refers to care and services provided by families, relatives and friends, neighbors, and volunteers in the community. The core of "care by the community" is to emphasize the mobilization of resources in the community, and to mobilize relatives, friends and residents in the community to help provide care. It is a core strategy for implementing community care.

2. Intervention strategy

In community care practice, the establishment of a strong regional support network has proven to be a strategy that community care cannot be ignored. The focus of Caring for the Community is to actively assist vulnerable groups and people in need to re-establish support networks in the community to help them stay in the community or

They maintained an independent and dignified life in their original living environment.

Social support network refers to the interpersonal relationship network formed by individuals in the society's interpersonal communication. Social support networks include both formal social support networks and informal social support networks. The reality of contemporary society shows that formal organizational relationships can not replace the social capital and support provided by informal interpersonal relationships. Without an informal social support network, it is difficult to build a "caring community" that watches, helps, and loves each other.

"Taking care of the community" emphasizes the use of the power of the informal social support network, because the characteristics of the informal social support network are flexible, timely, convenient and humane. Sexual support and short-term mild services, etc.

Gain the trust of recipients and provide first aid. Usually, people in need in the community will seek the support of family, relatives, friends and neighbors when they are in difficulty. Rarely will they seek formal professional assistance immediately. Therefore, the main task of community workers is to identify existing networks in the community, assist in establishing or strengthening these support networks, and promote the support and mutual assistance capabilities of network members.

Generally speaking, community support networks fall into three categories:

(1) Networks that provide direct services. The first category is direct service, which involves mobilizing family members, relatives, neighbors, or volunteers in the community to establish a support system to care for people in need in the community. For example, mobilize community volunteers to visit orphaned elderly people living alone to help them clean up their homes; mobilize volunteers to provide organized and systematic rehabilitation services for the disabled, etc.

(2) The mutual assistance network of the service object itself. This refers to the establishment of mutual assistance groups for the clients themselves so that they can support each other in a self-help way. This type of service is based on the same type of service objects, such as mutual aid organizations for cancer patients and mutual help groups for leukemia patients. the first

This type of work is mostly based on regional communities. Neighbors, resident organizations, or volunteers are launched in the same community to care for people in need in the community. The second type of work is mainly based on the same type of service objects and functions. The concept of community goes to establish a mutual aid organization.

(3) Community emergency support network. This is a support network built to help individuals and families prevent emergencies or crises, such as emergency mutual aid programs for elderly people living alone, and neighborhood watch crime prevention programs assisted by the police. At present, China's community emergency support network has not been well promoted.

As a result, family disputes and personal difficulties are often exacerbated by the lack of timely mediation or settlement. An ideal community emergency support system should be composed of residents committees and neighborhood systems, public security police stations and government agencies, street offices, community centers or social service agencies, and district units to establish a hotline or emergency support service network, and strive to provide residents with Timely help and support services.

3 Evaluation

"Taking care of the community" emphasizes mobilizing resources within the community and actively assisting vulnerable groups and people in need to re-establish support networks in the community. If these strategies can be flexibly applied to the social work process, they can play an active supporting role and assist Needed clients to face and resolve species

This kind of difficulty, gradually establish a community of mutual care, to achieve the ideal of community care.

Mobilizing human resources in the community and using community support networks to provide care services can make up for the lack of institutional care and even replace many of the functions of institutional care.

However, the informal social support network also has its shortcomings. The main reason is that the professional service level of the service providers is not high, and they often cannot provide a sufficient level of service support to the service targets. In addition, recipients are often not guaranteed to provide consistent and reliable support.

Care for the community

1. definition

In the systematic division of community care, the British scholar Walker proposed that in addition to "care in the community" and "care by the community", it should also include "cal'e for the community", It is believed that the success of community care alone is not enough on the strength of the community and family members. In order not to "deplete" these caregivers, sufficient supportive community services are needed to make community care sustainable.

"Care with the community" services mainly include day hospitals, day care centers, home care, rehabilitation nurses, diverse community service centers for the elderly, respite services, care visits, and regular telephone consolation. Adequate provision of these services can help the community keep those in need

Phone consolation and so on. Adequate provision of these services can help the community to keep those in need in the community to live. At its core, care with the community emphasizes the importance of complementary and complementary forms of formal and informal care.

2. Evaluation

The strategies of care in the community and care in the community have their own advantages and disadvantages. The care with the community service combines the advantages of the two, complements and complements each other, emphasizing the establishment of a social service model that can integrate both formal social services and informal social support networks.

The implementation strategy of care with the community clearly points to the importance of integrating formal and informal care. The advantages of formal institutions are clear organizational structure, clear professional division of labor, clear job responsibilities, adequate resource mobilization, and scientific service plan design.

Institutional strengths, providing professional and guaranteed services to the community. However, formal services are easier to bureaucratize and regularize, which leads to lack of flexibility and flexibility, and also requires a certain degree of resource input. Informal relationship networks are the main way of human interaction in traditional social conditions. In fact, the relationships in communities are mainly such informal social relationships. Informal social relationships are flexible, resilient, and easily accessible to those in need in the community. The relationship between formal organizations and informal social support networks is a complementary and cooperative relationship of division of labor. It takes full advantage of the role of informal networks in the community, cooperates with formal social services, and establishes effective community-based care networks. The functions of different networks provide different types of services and support for community residents, so that the difficulties of recipients can be solved in the community.

There are two types of work objects for social workers in the community care model: one is the traditional service target, such as the elderly, disabled children, and mental patients; the other is the caregiver who cares for the service target in the family, such as the children of elderly people who cannot take care of themselves , Parents of children with intellectual disabilities, etc. Its main roles are

The following aspects:

1. Patient. Social workers intervene in a case or group manner, provide psychological therapy, family therapy or group therapy for individuals and families in need, help clients to classify and analyze their difficulties and needs, assist clients to eliminate emotional distress, and help clients achieve The change they are after.

2. Mentor. Social workers are involved as tutors or teachers in families in need, provide counselling services to family members, and provide group training courses for multiple families in a community with common needs.

3 broker. The role of a broker refers to social workers looking for relevant services for clients, such as finding special education schools for children with intellectual disabilities and assisting them with cultural education; finding community resources for carer group activities, such as event venues; and promoting carer assistance services Institutional implementation services; provision of financial or community resources and application channels to carer groups.

4 Advocates. The role of the advocate is for social workers to resist or promote a purposeful action with clients or as their representatives, fight for the rights and dignity of individuals and groups in need, and protect and promote these by improving community systems and community norms. New rights. For example, to advocate and strive for suitable services for more special clients; to provide advice to carers to relevant parties and strive for improvement measures; through education and training, encourage carers to fight for their rights and interests independently.

5. suggester. Social workers provide advice to relevant service agencies on the situation of clients, such as introducing special disabled children to special education schools and making service recommendations; providing activities and development to individuals, families or groups in need in case and group work Directional advice, such as providing support for groups of carers, providing advice on activities and development directions. Social workers form partnerships with individuals, families or groups in need. The anointing of the social worker. It provides support for groups of carers, advice on activities and development directions. Social workers form partnerships with individuals, families, or groups in need. The opinions provided by social workers are for reference only and do not guide the decision-making process.

(A) advantages

1. Humane care for clients. Community care emphasizes keeping the people in need in the community to solve their difficulties, emphasizing the mining of various human resources in the community, establishing a community support network, and realizing mutual assistance between community members to play the role of care and enhance humanity turn off

Huai, close the relationship between community residents.

2. Mobilize community members to participate in community care. Community participation and community democracy are the core principles of community care, mobilizing the awareness of community residents' participation and mutual assistance, encouraging community residents to care for and accept some clients with special needs, providing services to those in need in the community, and providing services to those in need. Only by building a community mutual help network can people help build a caring and supportive community environment and promote community development. Only then can the values of community care be realized at the highest level.

3 Promote the integration of service resources. "Care in the community" reflects the change in service strategy, that is, through the non-institutionalization of services and the strengthening of supportive services, the caregivers are allowed to live in their familiar communities. Care by the community highlights the comprehensive use of service resources, that is, mobilizing caregivers

Relatives, friends, and neighbors. Community care focuses on making use of the informal network of natural relationships that exists in the community, combining it with the formal network to provide assistance to clients, thereby building a caring community.

(II) Limitations Government responsibility and role issues that may arise from decentralization of resources and power. Community care focuses on using the combination of informal natural relationship networks and formal networks in the community to provide help and services to clients, and to play the role of positive social capital in social support networks to avoid social exclusion. However, the government cannot excuse the government's responsibility on the pretext of the existence of social informal networks and reduce the services that the formal networks such as governments and institutions should provide to the community. On the contrary, the implementation of community care requires more government investment and commitment.

2. The status of community resources may not meet the requirements of community care. The basic idea of community care is to rely on the community, based on the community, rely on the community and give full play to the power of the community relationship network to support various services, so the focus of community care is to emphasize the full use of community resources. However, due to the current development of society and changes in family structure, all of this may happen that the state of community resources does not meet the requirements of community care, and the caregivers cannot get the care they deserve.

3 Incentive issues. Community care is clearly the traditional basis of responsibility and altruism as the moral basis of care. However, while we affirm moral commitment and binding power, we must acknowledge that moral commitment is limited. When it is impossible for a family or a community network to take long-term responsibility for the person being cared for, the interests of the person being cared for will eventually be harmed.

4 The quality of informal care services is difficult to guarantee. Community care is a social service network. Informal caregivers such as family, neighbors, friends, and volunteers in this network usually do not receive proper professional training. The services provided are non-professional and the quality of services may be difficult to guarantee. It is also difficult to ensure the continuity and reliability of services with the help of relatives, friends, and neighbors, and recipients who require special or special services may not be properly cared for.

5. Community exclusion and discrimination against people in need. The society often has prejudice and discrimination against people with special difficulties, such as the disabled, mentally ill, adolescents who have lost their footing, and those released from prison. They even oppose the establishment of related service facilities in the community and lack a caring and considerate attitude. Accept them. Further reading: China's development of "social and cultural" social and cultural soil is also a good choice for Chinese society, because Chinese society has a good acceptance basis for this implementation strategy.

1. Socio-cultural background

The tradition of accompany neighbours and watch and help each other has been in China for thousands of years. Chinese society and culture is a farming culture. It emphasizes the role of the family, emphasizes family relations, and further promotes neighbor relations. And the family-based welfare guarantee and service system has given China the embryonic form of community care based on family care from the beginning. There have been more systematic expositions in traditional Chinese thought.

For example, the "Book of Rites · Li Yun" said: "The road is also the road, the world is the public ... So the people are not alone, not the only son and the son. To make the old end, strong and useful, young and grow, Those who are lonely and waste sputum all have support. "Mencius and King Liang Hui said:" If you are in the same village, you will come and go, you will help each other, and you will be supported by disease. The people will be friendly. " The development has had a far-reaching impact. The folks have adopted the concept of "watching and helping each other and supporting phlegm and sickness" as their living principles, and formed a welfare care network based on family self-care and mutual aid. Because of this, China has a tradition of community care since ancient times.

2. China's unique family pension care tradition

In Chinese families, parents are responsible for raising their children, and children are also responsible for supporting their parents. Western parents are responsible for raising children, but their children are not responsible for supporting their parents. This tradition has laid the cultural and socio-historical foundation for our community care today.

3 Status of China's population aging

As the world's largest developing country, China has ushered in an aging population under the background of social production level and underdeveloped economy, which will inevitably bring profound changes to economic and social development. This change is widely and profoundly affecting all aspects of human social life, and adopting coping strategies and countermeasures such as relatively slowing down the aging rate and implementing elderly services is also an important issue for us to carry out community care today.

4 Exploration of the Reform of Our Welfare System and Community Construction

As state-owned enterprises deepen reforms and government agency reforms and change functions, most of the social functions that are divested by enterprises and service functions that are transferred from the government must be undertaken by urban communities. With the continuous improvement of people's living standards and the in-depth reform of various systems such as housing, pensions, employment, and medical care, promoting community construction, expanding community services, and improving the quality of life have become urgent requirements for the majority of urban residents. The establishment of a new social security system and socialized service network and the development of community care require the participation of a wide range of social forces, especially the involvement of non-governmental and non-profit social service intermediary organizations. Therefore, in recent years, China has developed some experiences in line with China's national conditions by promoting community services and developing community care. ^[1]