Community Service Staff Capacity Building and Elders’ Willingness to Age in Place

Abstract

It is uncertain how building the elderly service staff’s capacity sustains the elder’s willingness to age in place. This uncertainty concerns how the staff’s capacity building (i.e., capacitation) meets the elder’s care needs. The uncertainty prompts this study to administer a survey of 1,023 elders and a survey of their 138 community service providers in Hong Kong, China. Results show that staff capacitation sustained the elder’s willingness to age in place, particularly when the staff provided more care or the elder used daycare or home care instead of other community services. This sustenance indicates that meeting the elder’s need for care fosters the elder’s willingness to age in place. Results imply that staff capacitation effectively met elders’ care needs to secure their willingness to age in place. Such capacitation can apply particularly to elder caregiving services.

Keywords:

• Aging in place
• capacity building
• need meeting
• eldercare
• community care

Acknowledgments

Authors declare that the study complied with human research ethics and that the respondents showed their informed consent to the survey.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Funding support for the study comes from a grant from a Social Service Agency in Hong Kong, China. The study evolves from a research project approval by the research Ethics Committee of the City University of Hong Kong.