Zhangjiagang, a county-level city in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, has been involving commercial vendors and social organizations in its elderly homecare service system through government procurement since 2014.
To date, the city has built 255 community elderly care centers that provide services for all its villages.
Senior residents living in the Xinnan community in Daxin town are among the beneficiaries of the efforts. Since 2019, when the Zhangjiagang government purchased eldercare services from a specialized company, elderly people – they account for about 25 percent of all residents – in the community have been able to access comprehensive and professional care services.
The community could only use resources from other departments, such as civil affairs authorities and women's federations, to provide elderly care services in the past due to the lack of manpower, said a staff member at the community.
To improve public senior care services, Zhangjiagang has also cooperated with the country's leading providers and offered subsidies to local companies.