China National Committee On Ageing--Report on IFA’s Senior Officials Meeting 2008 and the 9th Global Conference on Ageing

The Yearly Council of IFA (International Federation on Ageing), the Senior Officials Meeting, and the 9th Global Conference on Ageing took place from September 3rd to 7th, 2008 in Montreal, Canada. On invitation of Ms. Irene Hoskins, the president of IFA, Wu Yushao, the vice president of CNCA, representing Li Bengong (one of the directors of IFA), attended the council. And later, Wu gave a presentation under the subject of Practices and Experiences of Ageing-in-place in China on the Senior Officials Meeting.

I. IFA’s Council

IFA’s second Council was held on September 3rd 2008 in Montreal, and Mr. Wu Yushao, the vice president of CNCA, representing Li Bengong, attended the meeting.

There are total 24 directors in IFA, and 19 of them had presented the council, including the president of IFA, vice president of international affairs, deputy director for affairs in Asia-pacific area, secretary-general, and the cashier. The major agenda of the council are:

1. Approve the council compendium made in May 2008 in Beijing

2. Discuss development strategy and membership issues of the IFA

3. Listen to relevant reports

This council continued the discussion of consigning American Association of Retired Persons to publish the federation publications, as well as opening mind to develop individual members under the same model of governmental and non-governmental members. However, since directors held different opinions, the later issue would be further discussed in London Council in January 2009. Besides, the secretary-general announced that the IFA would hold an international forum under the theme of “Ageing in Place” from September 9th to 12th 2009 in Akita, Japan. Moreover, the 10th Global Conference on Ageing of IFA would be held from May 3rd to 6th 2010 in Melbourne, Australia.

II. Senior Officials Meeting and Global Conference on Ageing

In the morning of September 4th, IFA organized and held the Senior Officials Meeting under the theme of “Ageing in Place”. Senior officials and ministers from Canada, Austria, Australia, Britain, United States, China, Japan, Denmark, Israel, etc., had presented the meeting.

Firstly, the president of IFA, Ms. Irene Hoskins gave an address for the meeting and she expressed her appreciation for all present delegates. She held the idea that population ageing was a common issue to the whole world, which would impact on each country’s economy and society directly. Indubitably, this Senior Officials Meeting could provide a platform for the participators to communicate and share experiences and practices on ageing-in-place program, in order to discuss existing problems, identify the right direction, and drive the further development of ageing-in -place program together.

Ms. Susan Scotti, the assistant deputy director of Canadian Human Resource and Social Development Ministry, introduced that the population ageing in Canada had been deteriorated in the beginning of the 21st century, and the proportion of senior citizen (over 65) had been increasingly grown continuously. In the year 2001, the proportion of senior citizen accounted for 1/8 of the whole population, while the same rate was estimated to be over 1/5 in the year 2026. Meantime, there would be one senior citizen over the age of 65 in every 5 people. Population ageing needed the efforts of the whole nation, including to enhance the healthy level, welfares and independent ability for the aged in their late years; to encourage and support the elderly to continue the participation for the economic and social lives; to intensify and improve the environment for those elderly who choose ageing in place; and to take sustaining government actions to benefit people of all ages as well as the old people. In order to tackle the challenges of population ageing, a series of actions and programs that were jointly adopted by Canadian Federation and local governments had been taken place, including support program for low income seniors, housing support program, financial subsidy for house caretaker, elderly health promotion program and so on. All of these would help seniors to realize ageing in place, and encourage family members to provide care services for the elderly. According to the introduction, as much as over 1 billion Canada dollars was used for revenue support and decrease for services for ageing-in-place in the year 2006 alone.

Dr. Erika Winkler, the vice director of Ageing Policy Division of Ministry of Social Affairs and Consumer Rights Protection of Austria, gave an emphasized introduction on long-term care insurance in Austria. 80% of senior citizens of Austria could be independent for ageing in place, and only a few simple services were needed from the community. While some 18% elderly needed long-term care: 10% of them needed level 1-2 loose care, which took 120 hours each month; and 8% of them needed longer time and more attended care. One particular point was that, among the needed senior citizens, over 80% of them stayed at home and were cared by their families instead of turning to the specific service institution. Therefore, the Austrian government made a particular policy for supporting the family members who taking care of the elderly, e.g. (1) if the family caregiver cannot provide temporary care caused by illness, vacation or other reasons, the long-term care insurance would provide the subsidy for the cost of substitute care services in the market. (2) For the family members who take care of the last elderly, their employer should give a vacation for no longer than 3 months.

Ms. Mary Murnane, the vice secretary of Health and Ageing Department of Australia, introduced the situation of ageing in place in Australia. She gave various models of ageing-in-place programs and aging-in-institution programs. And she pointed out the advantages and disadvantages for both models, i.e. ageing-in-place covered more aged people and it cost much less than the institution. She thought the emphasis of next step for the ageing-in-place process lied in further understanding the need and demand from the elderly; supporting the informal caregivers; providing more suitable housing and community environment for ageing-in-place program; the new measurement for ageing-in-institution model; and the more effective shift mechanism between ageing-in-place and ageing-in-institution.

Mr. Wu Yushao represented China to give the presentation under the subject of Practices and Experiences of Ageing-in-place in China. He expressed the necessity and importance of China’s ageing-in-place program to the rest of delegates; introduced the practice and experience of ageing in place in China and the relevant existing problems. At the same time, he also gave emphasis on the functions and roles of both government and non-government organizations in ageing-in-place program. The delegates had praised China’s achievement on ageing-in-place issues. Since there were over 150 million elderly people in China, which was even more than the whole population of some nations, it needed much greater efforts to solve the ageing service problem, and China had done great contributions for the world.

Later, delegates from the United States, Britain, Vietnam, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Japan etc. also gave introductions on their ageing-in-place situation and government actions. After the presentation and discussion, the Senior Officials Meeting was closed in the afternoon.

The Global Conference opened on the afternoon of September 4th. The conference had have invited an ordinary senior citizen to make a thematic presentation, which aroused the interest of attending delegates. Otherwise, the officials taking charge of ageing affairs, and officials of Quebec and Montreal came to the meeting and gave addresses respectively. The Global Conference was full scheduled with 5 plenums, 8 group meetings, and nearly 100 of presentations within the 4-day-long conference. The presentation subjects included ageing in place, age-friendly community, long-term care insurance, living environment for the aged, elderly income, generation equality, elderly endowment, last care, innovation and design, elderly abuse, elderly participation, public policies for the aged, and so on.

During the Global Conference, a product exhibition for the aged was also organized by the conference hosts. Over 30 companies had participated in the exhibition, and the exhibiting products included products for the aged, housing for the aged, elderly food and costumes, publication and research for the elderly. Some of the showcases even invited elderly people to introduce the products in person.

III. Experience and Suggestions

1. Continue the further cooperation with IFA

Through attending this conference, we found IFA’s effective work style was very impressive to us. Generally, it feels like that the arrangement was scheduled very orderly and with rich contents during the meeting time. The Global Conference was opened as soon as the Senior Officials Meeting closed on later September 4th; nearly a hundred of presentations and lectures were arranged throughout the 4 days of meeting, and with 5 plenums and one product exhibition, all of which had provided a large of information to the delegates. It was a little pity that some of reports and presentations were failed to release since the time conflict. However, this full scheduled meeting enabled us learn more ageing-in-place situations in other countries in such a short period and enlarge our view on ageing services, which was a valuable experience for us.

IFA is one of the perennial international partners of CNCA, which has always paid great attention on the cooperation with CNCA. Since a decade of the membership of IFA, CNCA has participated in several programs organized by IFA, while the initiative functions and contributions of CNCA were somehow limited. The suggestion is in the future, CNCA should be more initiative for relevant activities, in order to implement the obligation of being the largest member of IFA in Asia, to publicize China’s achievement on ageing to the world, to exchange and discuss international issues on ageing, to enhance China’s international image, and to play the corresponding role in the world ageing careers.

2. Ageing-in-place needs more joint effort of the government and society

According to other countries’ presentations, a large part of senior citizens in their countries would like to choose aging in place, and only less than 10% of them choose the nursing homes. Though the developed countries have had established many of nursing homes earlier, they have realized the importance of ageing-in-place in recent years, so they adopted a series of actions to help the elderly to realize the program, including improving service environment, enhancing the service ability, and setting up facilities for the aged in the community. Meanwhile, all of the counties also paid much attention on the roles of civil organizations, enterprises, families in ageing-in-place. The ageing-in-place needs powers of all parties.

We have noticed that, many of developing counties also mentioned that, the responsibility of government should be limited to a rational and endurable scope. We agreed with this principle. When China developed ageing-in-place program, the government responsibilities of demonstration, promotion, support, planning and supervision must be fulfilled, but the government should not be the sole part. The influences of family, society, and individuals are all needed to be stimulated to jointly support the ageing-in-place program.

3. Ageing-in-place needs political guarantee

Ageing-in-place is not a temporal work. Instead, it is a long-term work to tackle the challenges caused by population ageing, and to satisfy the demand for old-age service of the elderly. The stable development of ageing-in-place program cannot rely on some actions by chance, while it has to be brought into the constructive orbit so to be effectively developed by political guarantee. These policies include:

(1) Bring the ageing-in-place program into the society development planning and yearly work planning of departments of both central and all local levels; and put it into the agenda of officials as one of the most important routines to deal with.

(2) Establish the suitable financing system for the ageing-in-place program, including old-age support, medical insurance, which enable the elderly enjoy the financial support of ageing-in-place services. Especially for those elderly who need long-term care, there must be a long-term care insurance system to support them. Currently, China hasn’t worked out on this policy, so we have to learn more from foreign experience.

(3) Stipulate policies to encourage and support the private institutions that provide ageing-in-place services, especially in the aspects of industry approval, revenue preferential, loan support and so on, so to make more social resources pour into the ageing-in-place program. And make market system play more and more important role in the process of ageing-in-place.

(4) Combine the ageing-in-place program and nursing institution. This can not only give enough time for most of the elderly for their ageing in place, but also enable those elderly who really need nursing institutions get more professional care, which finally could find the balance between the ageing-in-place system and nursing institutions, so to make better use of resources of both models.

(5) Other compounding policies, e.g. construction planning in community, housing support for the aged, support for caregivers (especially the family members), authentication and training system for human resource of ageing-in-place program, and so on.

4. Ageing-in-place of China has to go its own way

The present delegates reiterated that, with comparison of China’s over-populated senior citizens, they were only “a little village”, which meant that any simple problem on ageing would become a huge issue when multiplying the number 153 million. It was not difficult to provide somewhat welfare-like ageing-in-place services for the elderly for those countries with relative higher GDP and smaller ageing population. However, it was completely impractical for China to follow the “model for small-sized country” or “model for the rich country”, since it had such a large amount of ageing population and had been “older before rich”. Therefore, China had to work out a “model for large-sized country” of its own feature, for some western experience may work well in western countries but it might not adapt to China’s situation.

(Reported by Wu Yushao, Sun Huifeng, Wang Longxuan on September 20th, 2008)