Description

China has become the country with the largest aging population in the world. Actively responding to population aging and accelerating the development of senior care services to meet the constantly growing demand for senior care, has become a pressing task. On June 25, 2019, the Workshop on Aging, End of Life Care, and Social Policy, jointly sponsored by Shanghai Academy and the Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, UK, was held at Shanghai Academy. Zhao Kebin, Executive Vice President of Shanghai Academy, and John Troyer, Director of theCentre for Death and Society, University of Bath, respectively addressed the meeting. Zhu Cheng, Director of the Cooperation Division of Shanghai Academy, hosted the opening ceremony.

Keynote speeches

Zhao Kebin

Zhao Kebin said China has become an aging society with profound changes in the age structure of the population, it has shown increasingly prominent characteristics of an aging society. In China, the aged care system is still dominated by home care. So, launching corresponding social policies is necessary. Families who have lost their only child are a special social group. Losing the only child has a huge impact on individuals, families and even the whole society. So, it’s our responsibility to conduct surveys and research on families who have lost their only child, and properly care for and look after such families. As a new-type think tank research institute set up between the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Shanghai Municipal People's Government, Shanghai Academy has the responsibility and obligation to use this issue as a starting point and thouroughly explore the issue of “death and society”, so as to pool the wisdom of various sides and contribute to the steady development of the economy and society.

John Troyer

John Troyer pointed out that conducting deeper research on “aging, end of life care, and social policies” can effectively improve the prospects of providing assistance to more families in the future. As an aging population has become a major issue facing many countries in the world, research on aging is of great significance. He hoped the meeting will help connect different countries by building a bridge that promotes the long-term cooperation among them and improves their ability to tackle the problems arising from an aging society.

Zhu Cheng

Zhu Cheng said, aging is a very serious social issue that we are currently facing. The Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath is an important institute in Europe that focuses on aging and end of life care. He expected Shanghai Academy to cooperate with Bath University’s Centre for Death and Society, explore the issues about aging and social policies with scholars from China, UK, Germany and Japan, and kick off more academic cooperation and exchanges in the future with this meeting as the starting point.

The meeting included keynote speeches, theme speeches and special discussions. Attending experts and scholars shared the latest research results and successful practice cases in the fields of aging, end of life care, and social policies, and discussed how to establish preliminary aging-related academic research networks in China, particularly in the Yangtze River Delta region.

Theme speeches

I Building a new-type social senior care system

II Improving the new model for long-term care and end of life care

III Exploring the senior care mechanism from the perspective of Aging Economics

IV Viewing aging and social senior service from the perspective of social psychology