Chongqing- Responding to the people’s daily concerns and solve their livelihood problems, and allowing them to be aware of the handling of facts that they care about most, Southwest China’s Chongqing held a series of press conferences on the practical activities under the theme of "I do practical work for the people."

The first press conference was held on July 20. Xu Jianhua, a member of the party leadership group and deputy director of the Chongqing Civil Affairs Bureau, revealed their major focus, which is to improve the caring services for the elderly.

Pension bed

According to Xu, since 2021, the bureau has introduced 50 policies and measures in response to 10 major issues of elderly care services following the requirements of the "I do practical work for the masses" practical activities.

Solving the "difficult to find one pension bed" problem in urban nursing homes, Chongqing has newly built 6000 public elderly care beds, totaling more than 40,000.

Meanwhile, supporting social demands for seniors, the bureau has added 47 socially-run elderly care institutions, reaching 545 with more than 70,000 beds.

Enhancing the full coverage of community home-based elderly care services, the bureau has added 220 street care service centers, 2,912 community care service stations and included more than 7,000 embedded beds in the community.

Eating 

Solving the eating problem for the elderly, Chongqing relies on the community senior citizen service facilities on the streets to open up 1091 elderly meal aids or canteens and carry out door-to-door meal delivery services.

Jiangbei, Yuzhong, and Yubei districts and other places in Chongqing have also provided subsidies of three to five yuan per meal for low-income needy elderly people.

Since the beginning of this year, a total of 720,000 meals have been provided.

Bathing 

Furthermore, to solve the bathing problem for disabled, older people, Chongqing relies on street community service facilities for the elderly to open up 497 community bathhouses.

Additionally, through establishing the "bath express" for disabled seniors, more than 20,000 people have successfully used mobile bathing services.

Smart technology 

To cope with the challenge of senior citizens learning to use smart technology, the city relies on the elderly service agencies to carry out "one-to-one" and "one-to-many" smart technology application training for the elderly in the community, with a target of breaking the "digital divide."

Finance

For the elderly in financial difficulties, Chongqing provides a monthly care subsidy of 200 yuan to eligible seniors and a monthly long-term care subsidy of 1,500 yuan to severely disabled senior citizens.

So far, the city has a total of 1,514 people enjoying long-term care insurance benefits.

Left-behind elderly

Regarding the left-behind elderly, Chongqing promotes the construction of rural mutual assistance pension points.

By establishing a "pair visits and care" system for the left-behind elderly in rural areas, the city regularly provides cultural entertainment, rehabilitation care, and psychological comfort services for 556,000 left-behind elderly people.

Chongqing has further upgraded the integrated development of medical and nursing services. 

Statistics show that there are 155 integrated medical and elderly care institutions in Chongqing. One thousand three hundred forty-five pairs of elderly care institutions and medical institutions have signed agreements to cooperate, and the integrated medical and elderly care coverage rate reaches 98%.