Community-based elderly care is a method of providing care to the elderly that has been actively developed globally. The community-based facilities and services supply is essential for implementing social elderly care, ensuring that older individuals receive the necessary support within their communities. The gaps between the supply and demand of community-based elderly care facilities and services seriously affect the quality of the elderly’s lives, further impacting social and economic development. The existing literature is limited in terms of the elderly’s needs, especially government documents, and studies that assess the supply situation of existing community-based elderly care facilities in China. The study explores the reasons for imbalanced supply and demand between community-based elderly care facilities and services in two cases in Shanghai urban central areas, aiming to develop effective research methods on the elderly’s needs and provide support for planning strategies and policy development. The elderly’s needs, and facilities and services supply were identified through semi-structured interviews with 40 elderly people and two managers, and 400-hour observations, while Shanghai’s existing policy gaps were identified through relevant documentary reviews. There is a significant undersupply gap between facilities and services, and the elderly’s needs in terms of life care, health and medical care, and spiritual and entertainment aspects. Oversupplied facilities and services have happened under sufficient government’s financial subsidies, and unreasonable allocation but are easy to install and can meet policy requirements. Shanghai’s future policy and planning guidance formulation for community-based elderly care facilities should be based on clarifying the elderly's needs investigation, focusing on improving the overall supply, marketising promotion of elderly care services in communities and developing skilled and ethical professional elderly care teams. Generated from the in-depth exploration and analysis of two case studies in the central urban area of Shanghai, this thesis proposes recommendations for the development of social elderly care and community-based elderly care facilities and services in other regions of China, the UK and Singapore. The contributions of this study include research method development, filling the gaps in the existing literature, the recommendations for Shanghai’s policy and planning guidance formulation, and the fieldwork and the research findings as reference to promote elderly care development. The elderly, government and social economy development can benefit from the improvement of policy and planning guidance on elderly care.
| Date of Award | 12 Feb 2026 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Danilo Di Mascio (Main Supervisor) |
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