Assessing Housing and Social care for Older Adults

Abstract

By the year 2025, people aged more than 65 are likely to exceed 20% of the Korean population, so-called a super-aged society. Preparing for an ageing society in Korea, the government must ensure that public policy deals with increasing social care needs. Most advanced countries make their transition from residential care to community-based care to respond to the needs of an ageing population. One of the key components of community-based services is ‘supported housing’ which integrate the housing and social care services. Most older adults stay in their homes as they get older. But they experience physical and/or cognitive impairments with income insufficiency. Also, they have complex housing-related needs depending on their family type, age, and housing condition. However, the responsibility to address complex needs is fragmented among different ministries in Korea. Housing services for the aged are implemented by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport and social care service is implemented by the Ministry of Health and Welfare respectively, and thus policies are not catching up with the pace of population ageing. Accordingly, to reduce the institutionalized form of care in long-term care facilities and “social hospitalization” in long term care hospitals, as well as the burden for social care, a new scheme is necessary that combines existing housing with care services. However, it takes a long time to build a large-scale multi-unit housing, and the supply of such a residential model may not reflect the demand and supply policies in the local community. Therefore, we need an alternative policy solution. Therefore, we would argue that barrier-free design ensures that older adults and differently-abled people get access to services unhindered. Although housing is private property, the research finding suggests that home modification and repairs can reduce injurious falls and their care time in community-dwelling older adults. Local governments play a key role in the development and implementation of housing policy. We expect local governments to play the following roles. Firstly, local governments should increase the supply of small-scale ‘welfare housing’ for older adults. Local governments can make timely and informed decisions across the spectrum of local housing-related needs. We ensure that it should involve financial support. Secondly, social care for the aged people is provided as a hierarchical compensatory model, but it should be comprehensive and provide customized service to respond to the needs of the older adults. To provide a tailored service responsive to the individual needs, “planning” and “monitoring” are essential. Thirdly, local governments should have discretionary space to develop flexible policy schemes that reflect the population size and structure, supply and demands of care facilities, and home care services. This can reduce the burden of the next generation and the inefficiency from the dual structure of health insurance and tax-financed care and health systems. We also can expect to develop a generation-integrated local community by narrowing the gap between demand and supply. This study also suggests the utilization of the joint project grant using the long-term care insurance fund and the general tax, granted for the tax-financed care programme. If we can save the health and long-term care spending for older people by improving their living conditions in the local community, we can incentivize the local government to reinvest the fund to create new projects (i.e., supported housing) in the local community.