Revistas académicas en Internet. Primeras opiniones

Being overloaded with administrative duties, the need to attend to wide range of needs of residents in the neighbourhood as well as the lack of a well-defined scope of responsibility are the factors hampering the Residents Committee from discharging its welfare role properly.

As noted by Yip, Leung and Huang (2013), the Residents Committee, being torn between performing its role of meeting the local residents’ welfare needs and administrative duties,

181 can hardly perform its function properly since they do not have the staff available to fulfil the duties required of them. This was also elaborated by Professor Liu from Peking University who remarked that the Residents Committee staff were preoccupied with the administrative duties assigned by the Street Office, leaving them no time to look into the needs of older people even though they wanted to do so.

Mr Ma, social worker of a social work organisation in Chaoyang District, Beijing, considered that the Residents Committee staff were faced with heavy administrative workload as well as the wide range of needs of residents. He continued to explain that its role is rather limited to providing support for older people in the community:

The Residents Committee staff are basically very busy with administrative work. Together with the team from the community service station (providing public services to the residents in the community), there is a total of 30 staff members but they have to serve several thousand of older people (within the administrative boundary). Even though they don’t do other things and spend all their time on older people, there isn’t much they can do. But in reality, there are still other groups of residents in the neighbourhood that they have to attend to.

The lack of an obvious scope of responsibility of the Residents Committee was a major barrier to the proper discharge of its duties, as raised by Mr Zheng, Residents Committee in- charge from Dongcheng District, Beijing:

While providing services for older people in the neighbourhood, how much should I do is considered to be enough? At the same time, the NGOs are using their own ways of providing professional service here…Then how should we position ourselves, being rooted in the neighbourhood with its traditional function? I consider the main problem to be the unclear work boundary leading to many things not being done or actualised…Who should be responsible for doing what?…It isn’t clear what should be done and shouldn’t be done.

182 The discussion reveals the difficulties facing the Residents Committee and explains why they can only offer the very basic service mainly to vulnerable groups of older people through concern visits or mobilisation of volunteers to relieve their home-care difficulties. At the same time, the Committee, being beyond its work capacity, finds the need to reinstate the family responsibility in the care of those older people who have family. There appears to be a gap between the perception of the residents about the readily available help from the Residents Committee, and the fact that the Residents Committee is unrealistically looked upon as having the responsibility in old-age care. Being an organisation rooted in the neighbourhood for a few decades, with a good knowledge of its characteristics and trust from the residents, the Residents Committee should utilise this advantage and explore more possibilities of collaborating with the NGOs, the new service partner in the community, to better support older people. One of the possibilities, as discussed in the previous section, is to collaborate with the NGOs to form a platform for recruiting and organising the volunteers systematically so that they can be a reliable source of support to serve the needy older people at the local level.

Policy implications

The impact of the market reform in the late 1970s has weakened the support for older people in the neighbourhood. The help that neighbours give each other relies on the degree of bonding and trust among residents and their sense of belonging to the neighbourhood. In the Chinese case, neighbourly relations were once reinforced by the work unit-based system during the pre-reform era. The market reform in the late 1970s brought enormous changes to life in the neighbourhood. As the neighbourhood no longer serves as a focal point in modern urban life, and with the increasing mobility of its residents, an emphasis on privacy, and growing concern about security, the ties of neighbourly relationships have significantly loosened. When neighbourly relationships decline, weakening of neighbourly rights and responsibilities is the outcome. Rather than having a close relationship with neighbours, the findings reveal that older people, especially young retirees, established their social network outside their neighbourhood and would rather contribute to society as volunteers.

183 Contrary to the social perception that neighbourly relationships are now less valued, as revealed by Read (2000), Forrest and Yip (2007) and Dai (2008), this research shows that older people still held in high regard for the practical support and sense of security provided by their neighbours. The expression of such needs arises when older people foresee that they, in advanced age and being likely to be house-bound, will require support one way or the other, and their family members will not be around to offer assistance. Gabriel and Bowling (2004) also highlighted the importance of close relationships with neighbours when older people lack the transportation or physical mobility to visit friends living far away or when they are sick.

Older people’s expectation of neighbourly support is in line with the state’s endorsement of strengthening neighbourhood responsibilities through reviving the traditional spirit of mutual help and pooling volunteers in the neighbourhood to support older people. However, the irregular and intermittent nature of the voluntary services falls short of meeting the continuous needs of older people, as illustrated by the fieldwork data. The market reform has brought with it new values, and it is no longer viable to rely on the individuals’ enthusiasm or initiative to shoulder neighbourhood responsibilities when society emphasises personal responsibility, rather than collective responsibility. More efforts are needed to enhance its effectiveness, as indicated in the findings. A systematic plan is necessary to identify who are in need of support and who are available to help, preferably those who live in the vicinity of those in need. Moreover, involving young retirees as volunteers can give them an opportunity to contribute to society, which is consistent with the independent self-image of older people.

The Residents Committee, serving as a bridge between the local government and the residents, has had a responsibility to gather up resources to help the needy in the neighbourhood since the socialist era. Its role has expanded to assimilate the welfare responsibilities left by the work unit after the economic reform. Nevertheless, the findings show that this local organisation does not have sufficient resources to tackle the home-care problems of older people in the neighbourhood, as has been pointed out by Read (2000), Lu (2006), Ho and Ng (2007) and Li (2010). The Residents Committee has aptly redefined its

184 responsibility by acting in accordance with instructions from the higher level to mainly look after special categories of older people and see family responsibility as the key source of support for those with children. This research reveals the discrepancy between the reality and the perception of the older people interviewed, who considered that this local organisation could serve as a source of support for them in case of need. This perception perhaps comes from the substantial involvement of the Residents Committee in the daily lives of individuals during the socialist era, as noted by White and Parish (1984) that the state, through the Residents Committee, exercised control over neighbourhood activities. This gives older people an impression that this organisation has a responsibility to provide support to them, leading to the divergence in the understanding of its obligations. Thus, this research adds to the understanding of how the Residents Committee staff re-define their responsibilities in the face of limited resources, and also reveals the discrepancy between the expected and the actual role in the care of older people.

Instead of clinging to conventional perceptions and keeping an undefined role regarding old- age care, a rethink of the responsibility of the Residents Committee is required. Having been in existence in the neighbourhood since 1950s, the Residents Committees have a good knowledge of the neighbourhoods’ characteristics. This potential can be utilised to develop a platform to coordinate the voluntary service with the NGOs, the new social service partners in the neighbourhood, so that community resources can be more effectively connected to older people in need.

Given the growing number of older people in empty-nest households, if the informal support network in the neighbourhood can function well to provide a source of care for older people, in the long run, it can share the responsibility of looking after older people without relying wholly on state services.

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