The Issue Of The ‘Hidden’ Elderly In Hong Kong
Some college gerontology professors say there are about 70,000 to 80,000 'hidden ' elderly who are frail, living alone and not using social services in Hong Kong. 'Elderly invisible' refers to the elderly who are isolated from society and do not know how to seek assistance without being aware of the existing community support network. They usually live alone or together, lack family or peer support, and have no normal social life. And according to the Commission of Poverty (CoP), the hidden elderly is those elderly who “are disengaged from the community and disadvantaged group yet not helped by the available services and support”. Therefore, in addition to providing services, in order to be perceived as hidden elderly must move out of the community and be disadvantaged or disadvantaged in some respects. Hence, we should not define it as 'hidden' if we have existing services and support, or if we do not have formal terms of service and risk. So, it is important to understand what it means to 'hidden' elderly before considering whether to help them.
A brief review of official documents and news articles on the possession of the elderly in Hong Kong will help us to make four explanations of the 'hidden' phenomenon of the elderly in Hong Kong so as to find out the hidden challenges. They are, above all, in contrast to the average elderly seeking social services and Internet help, they are not enough in the first place to explain the 'implicit' feasibility of lack of ability or lack of capacity. Second, part of the explanation for the network deficit is due to family and friends and weak community networks. On the other hand, due to the lack of a formal service network of 'hidden' life. Third, seeking help is a moral wrong self-reliance. Fourthly, seeing a 'hidden' life is an explanation of the negative welfare experience resulting from negative or unfavourable welfare experiences before the elderly. In other words, they have already extended their aid before, but their experience is frustrating.
As before, we can find that the hidden population is those who actively seek to conceal their identities, such as illegal drug users, homosexuals and sexually active adolescents. Hard to reach is a term sometimes used to describe people who are hard-pressed to engage with the public. The concept of 'hidden' as 'inaccessible' elderly people is of special significance in the context of Hong Kong because it means that some people live below the normal expectations of the larger community. Therefore, how to treat them as the social entity of 'interaction' has become the main goal of relevant departments.
In this article, I want to explore the challenge of hiding the elderly through social, spiritual and environmental aspects. Some survey results show that 'hidden old people' are in a weak position compared with the average elderly. Some of them have the least contact with others, such as living or working in the community. Those kinds of casual communications. However, they seemed to lack contact for leisure, entertainment and mutual support with people. They were kind of isolated and lonely. Sometimes they also felt neglected, useless and hopeless. And felt dissatisfied with their lives. They didn’t believe that they can change anything and thought that ageing was as the natural causes for such an immutable condition. It seems to suggest that the “hidden” elderly can not completely get rid of the financial needs and other instrumental needs of the social system. To survive, contact is necessary but superficial; many of these are not physically isolated, but mentally lonely.
All elderly have formal access to different forms of socio-economic and personal security. In other words, they are formally associated with the social system of a large society in different ways. However, they do not interact with any real meaning in the social sense. They have very weak network of family and friends. They are passive and selective help seekers who have turned to the CSSA or OAA for financial assistance and have not sought any assistance from other parties. In other words, they are depending on themselves. However, this does not mean that relatives, friends or neighbors did not help at all, but their exchange of the ideas were not mutually beneficial. The root causes of weak social support networks are complex - there are differences between individuals - but the patterns of help are somewhat similar - many are passive in social networks, often avoiding bad contracts and past experiences. We also found that the 'hidden' elderly group also needed a stronger social network, placing demands on social services. Also found that the hidden senior is a heterogeneous group of life events. A number of major life events have been identified that could contribute to their hidden lives or to the ageing process such as retirement, declining health status, spousal deaths, incidents and their life histories (non-canonical events) family conflict, long-term lifestyle and unstable partners.
It has been found that the explanations of these four suggestions are somewhat related to explaining their lonely and hidden life. The elderly were incapable of doing anything about the financial, physical and intellectual aspects of social contact and help. They are cautious about their financial situation and are not willing to pay for 'expensive' activities organized by nearby geriatric centres. Social and economic insecurity can affect their social activities. However, their 'natural' social networks are not working well. Their children seem unreliable to provide support; their relatives have no connection or estrangement for a variety of reasons. They seem to have avoided their relationships with people around them because they feel the financial premise of friendship. They think that wealth is a necessary condition for maintaining a friendship. They would think that people without economic means are despised. In social relations, financial transactions are the most important facilitating and safeguarding factors. To them, the spirit of self-reliance is partly correct - in fact, four of the six covert elderly and the four formerly hidden senior citizens all receive CSSA. In the context of the happiness, there is still a strong self-reliance in seeking help.
Examines the unmet need for hidden elderly by using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Bloom's social networking capabilities, and Bradshaw's concept of social needs. It is observed that the hidden emotional needs and the hidden needs of the original there is a big difference. For many hidden elderly, social networking and social support are what they need, and they can provide tools and assessment support. Due to social isolation, rebuilding social networks requires spending a considerable amount of time on an individual level. In short, according to the poor living conditions of the elderly get timely help and help.
Therefore, if we want to reach the “hidden”, the strategies or service should be “making contact”, “building-networks”, and counselling, etc. And at the same time, adopted outreaching strategies to make initial contact with the “hidden”. And collaborating with various stakeholder was also effective. Community networking strategies are also used to help the “hidden” re-building their social network. This is noteworthy when considering 'rejected' because their hidden lives are hard to understand by us. We do not know if they are in danger or not, but what about their situation, these remind us that getting to the hidden elderly can be a time-consuming process. So, I will propose a series of intervention programs.
Firstly, I would like to apply the activity theory and role theory in this intervention plan. The activity theory proposed that successful ageing occurs when elderly stay active and maintain social interactions. It takes the view that the ageing process is delayed, and the quality of life is enhanced when elderly remain socially active. After that, the role theory is proposed that each role is a set of rights, duties, expectations, norms and behaviours that a person has to face and fulfil. And one of the major components of role theory is role loss. This occurs usually as people age; they start losing roles as active parents, employees, and spouses. This often leads to feelings of loss of control over life. In addition, older people generally have less contact with others which in turn causes their social networks to shrink. This leads to poorer health. So that, elderly should take a role that to maintain or enhance their social networks.
In this intervention plan, I am assumed that I am a DECC’s social worker. I will focus on the housing safety for the hidden elderly. However, when starting the plan, we do not serve the user and volunteers. So, in the early stages of the plan, we can invite the elderly who are the active member of the DECC. And collaborate or invite a different kind of field centre to join this plan such as youth centre and school. Then have a volunteers training course. In the training course, we will teach them the skill of visiting and what should we pay attention to their housing safety. After the training course, we will have home visitor sweeping patrol to introduce the plan first. After visiting the elderly, we can know that which home is an elderly living alone. Then we can focus on those potential services users. Also, we will visit them regularly by specific people, and to establish a certain relationship. After that, we can understand their daily life and needs. Visitors can also ask what are the places in their home that are unsafe and hope to help them improve their home safety through this activity. After the activity, I hope that by improving the security and space in the home, their daily life will also be improved, and they will be motivated to become part of the volunteers so that they will affect others “hidden”. So that they can have a volunteer’s role to involve in the society.
