Aids for Empty-nest Elders
1. Background
Beijing is the education center of China mainland, where incorporates multiple universities and forms expertise advantage in some disciplines. Psychology is one. Many Beijing’s universities have psychological academic units, such as us – Psychology Department of Peking University (PKU), Psychology School of Beijing Normal University (BNU), Psychology Faculty of Capital Normal University (CNU) and Psychiatry and Psychology Faculty of Capital Medical University (CCMU). [1] All we four units have high reputation in psychological field of China and contribute large numbers of research outcomes every year. Meanwhile, we can provide professional standard and high quality psychology knowledge for students of bachelor, master and doctor degrees.
However, in recent years, employment is always the biggest challenge for undergraduates in China, and psychological students of our universities are no exception. The most main but not the exclusive reason is that most psychological students are lacking of psychological practice experience before graduation. On one hand, their appropriate jobs are too narrow, and non-psychological jobs do not make sense. One the other hand, the psychology-related internship opportunities are scarce – the professional psychological counselling instructions are not willing to recruit students at school as part-time counselors Thus most of our students just can achieve knowledge from books and seminars and are exactly facing difficulty to show working aspiration to employers and start psychology-related career.
However, in recent years, employment is always the biggest challenge for undergraduates in China, and psychological students of our universities are no exception. The most main but not the exclusive reason is that most psychological students are lacking of psychological practice experience before graduation. On one hand, their appropriate jobs are too narrow, and non-psychological jobs do not make sense. One the other hand, the psychology-related internship opportunities are scarce – the professional psychological counselling instructions are not willing to recruit students at school as part-time counselors Thus most of our students just can achieve knowledge from books and seminars and are exactly facing difficulty to show working aspiration to employers and start psychology-related career.
2. Collaboration Opportunity
To solve this problem, we are preparing a collaborative initiative with a local non-profit organization (NPO).
Empty-nest elders are a group of people who are living alone since their children have left home. In 2012, this group of Beijing reaches 47.6% of the total number of elders.[2] Senior Citizen Caring Center (SCCC) is a NPO who aims to help the empty-nest elders of this city and provides voluntary household-related services to them. It has established for ten years and has stable volunteer resources and good praise from the target group and public. But currently, more and more volunteers noticed that parts of elders may have psychological symptoms, such as loneliness, fear, depression, mania and anxiety.[3] The volunteers thought these elders need psychological aids, but without professional knowledge and skills, they could not do anything about this issue.
On a local psychological forum, we met the Secretary-General of SCCC, and then we found that we may satisfy each other’s needs by own special resources.
Empty-nest elders are a group of people who are living alone since their children have left home. In 2012, this group of Beijing reaches 47.6% of the total number of elders.[2] Senior Citizen Caring Center (SCCC) is a NPO who aims to help the empty-nest elders of this city and provides voluntary household-related services to them. It has established for ten years and has stable volunteer resources and good praise from the target group and public. But currently, more and more volunteers noticed that parts of elders may have psychological symptoms, such as loneliness, fear, depression, mania and anxiety.[3] The volunteers thought these elders need psychological aids, but without professional knowledge and skills, they could not do anything about this issue.
On a local psychological forum, we met the Secretary-General of SCCC, and then we found that we may satisfy each other’s needs by own special resources.
3. Collaboration, Strategy and Approach
The collaboration project will be a social initiative which will be named “Holistic Aids for Empty-nest Elders” (HAFEE) and aim at providing more holistic services to Beijing’s Empty-nest elders. Our four psychological units and SCCC are the co-sponsors of HAFEE and make the psychological problems as the trigger in the initial stage. In this initiative, a website (www.hafee.org) will play a key enabler to achieve the physical physiology-related activities.
In the beginning, SCCC will upload doubtful symptom (behavior observation by household service volunteers), area and gender information of the elders in need – for private security, the detailed address, elder’s name and some sensible information will not be displayed online. Meanwhile, we will mobilize students to submit volunteer application via the website, if they want more psychological practice chances. Then parts of students will find the potential matching elders based on doubtful symptom, gender and area information, and apply for voluntary participation online. SCCC will compare them and select parts of candidates firstly, and organize offline interview to further filter and match the most appropriate psychological volunteer to the elder. The selected student will be in pair with a household service volunteer and carry out face-to-face voluntary activities to provide psychological assistance with the target elder. After several times, the psychological volunteer will discuss solution with other volunteers online to address the target elder’s early psychological problem – more company, more collective activities or needing elder partner or new dwelling environment. Some solutions may need SCCC, other volunteers’ aids and cooperation. If the elder may have mental disease, the student should timely report to his/her faculty and SCCC to apply for more professional psychological counseling or formal treatment.
In the beginning, SCCC will upload doubtful symptom (behavior observation by household service volunteers), area and gender information of the elders in need – for private security, the detailed address, elder’s name and some sensible information will not be displayed online. Meanwhile, we will mobilize students to submit volunteer application via the website, if they want more psychological practice chances. Then parts of students will find the potential matching elders based on doubtful symptom, gender and area information, and apply for voluntary participation online. SCCC will compare them and select parts of candidates firstly, and organize offline interview to further filter and match the most appropriate psychological volunteer to the elder. The selected student will be in pair with a household service volunteer and carry out face-to-face voluntary activities to provide psychological assistance with the target elder. After several times, the psychological volunteer will discuss solution with other volunteers online to address the target elder’s early psychological problem – more company, more collective activities or needing elder partner or new dwelling environment. Some solutions may need SCCC, other volunteers’ aids and cooperation. If the elder may have mental disease, the student should timely report to his/her faculty and SCCC to apply for more professional psychological counseling or formal treatment.
For our party, In the viewpoint of Venkatraman and John’s “Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing”, this initiative can be seen as a collaborative strategy, which integrates two vectors/directions of virtual organizing, namely asset configuration (virtual sourcing) and knowledge leverage (virtual expertise).[4] The volunteer opportunities provided by SCCC correspond to an interdependent extension of our psychological education "value chain". Plus, HAFEE will not just focus on psychological area and expect to integrate more resources to give more holistic helps. That is to say, the virtual network will be continually enlarged and form a resource coalition network in the future. On the other hand, hafee.org, as the essential and low-cost enabler, not only will optimize the participating process and spread our spirit rapidly, but also will generate a virtual community to facilitate professional knowledge sharing both of psychological and voluntary service.
Furthermore, in the angle of knowledge management, both the physical activities and the website will jointly act on three levels – Collection, to represent explicit knowledge in the ex-period criteria (refers to the session 5: Conflict Identification and Resolution); Connection, to help people who request knowledge support to find experts; and Conversation, to launch both linguistic online platform and offline activities to exchange tacit knowledge. (Viewpoint form IS6600: Global IS and KM Applications in Organisations, our core course)
4. Key Preconditions Analysis
To
accomplish this collaborative initiative, we should analyze the related
preconditions we have grasped or need to fulfill. At least five aspects of
preconditions should be considered.
4.1 Roles
First of all, we should clear what roles we will play in HAFEE. In the horizontal dimension, four psychological academic units of four universities in Beijing co-launch this social initiative with SCCC. While in the vertical dimension, five different kinds of people from our party will be invited to participate in the project: students, administrative staff, professors, postgraduates and alumni.
As mentioned before, our students will be the psychological volunteers as the main part of the physical activities. Considering the junior and senior students have studied most professional curricular and would have fewer lessons and much more free time than freshmen, sophomores and postgraduates, they will be relatively suitable and competent in the voluntary services. Besides, they are close to graduation and need to accumulate psychology-related experience for overcoming the employment pressure. It implies that they are more likely to join in HAFEE to absorb more practical experience.
As mentioned before, our students will be the psychological volunteers as the main part of the physical activities. Considering the junior and senior students have studied most professional curricular and would have fewer lessons and much more free time than freshmen, sophomores and postgraduates, they will be relatively suitable and competent in the voluntary services. Besides, they are close to graduation and need to accumulate psychology-related experience for overcoming the employment pressure. It implies that they are more likely to join in HAFEE to absorb more practical experience.
Administrative staff from each unit will be in charge of mobilizing students to apply for volunteers, supporting related training and meeting as coordinators during the project, and representing units to give recognition or even rewards for the excellent student volunteers.
In addition, professors, postgraduates and alumni, who are psychological practitioners, will be always welcome to the initiative – professors and postgraduates will provide their high-degree expertise to help the student volunteers with their work at school, while they and alumni can participate in the online forum to contribute experience and resources to help the empty-nest elders.
4.2 Resources
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Several
resources owned by us will be involved in the initiative. The expertise and
professional human resources, namely our students and professors, of course
will be the foundation of the collaboration. Additionally, each university can
provide enough large space with advanced multimedia equipment for supporting
the related physical activities, including ex-period training, seminar,
mobilization, summing-up and commendation meetings. These activities will be
very helpful for voluntary services and the project’s long-term development.
Each university also has special resources. For example, PKU can attract more
public attention by its highest reputation in China; CCMU has an affiliated psychological
hospital (Beijing An Ding Hospital) [5] to offer formal treatment; and BNU and CNU
can design elder education products for satisfying elder’s learning demand.4.3 Promotion channels
Given
the project is ongoing, we may be hard to carry out physical mobilization
frequently. Therefore, we need to learn some other channels to promote the
project among campuses.
In precise, the official webpage of each unit will open a new column to display HAFEE’s explanation document, supporting policies, news and participants’ reflections, and create the link with the hafee.org on the conspicuous space. Meanwhile, we will release the project information via the official accounts on Renren, Weibo and each university’s campus online forum. To paste posters to introduce HAFEE to more students and professors in four universities will be advisable, because we believe this project can be enlarged and enriched in the future – more professional volunteers will contribute more various aids to empty-nest elders.
In precise, the official webpage of each unit will open a new column to display HAFEE’s explanation document, supporting policies, news and participants’ reflections, and create the link with the hafee.org on the conspicuous space. Meanwhile, we will release the project information via the official accounts on Renren, Weibo and each university’s campus online forum. To paste posters to introduce HAFEE to more students and professors in four universities will be advisable, because we believe this project can be enlarged and enriched in the future – more professional volunteers will contribute more various aids to empty-nest elders.
4.4 Legal and regulatory constraints
In
China, people need to obtain the National Qualification Certificate in Psychological
Counseling before choosing psychological consultants as their occupation. But the lowest certificate
requires bachelor degree at least. On the other, the Mental Health Law regulates
that the certificated psychological consultants cannot engage with diagnosis
(not initial judgment) and treatment of mental disorder.[6] Online medical
consulting is allowed – there are several legitimate integrative websites help
users before adopting formal diagnosis and treatment.
Since these constraints, we plan to set defined responsibility boundaries to our students – they only can do informal psychological adjustment by chatting, pastime and company with the target elders. Based on their interaction and observation, if they find their target elders have potential hazards which need professional psychological intervention or mental treatment, they must report to their professor and SCCC to apply for further aids. And due to private protection, SCCC will not show any elder’s name, address and other sensitive information on the website. Simultaneously, we also will request students not to reveal their target elders’ private information with other people, except related officers, volunteers of SCCC and professors.
Since these constraints, we plan to set defined responsibility boundaries to our students – they only can do informal psychological adjustment by chatting, pastime and company with the target elders. Based on their interaction and observation, if they find their target elders have potential hazards which need professional psychological intervention or mental treatment, they must report to their professor and SCCC to apply for further aids. And due to private protection, SCCC will not show any elder’s name, address and other sensitive information on the website. Simultaneously, we also will request students not to reveal their target elders’ private information with other people, except related officers, volunteers of SCCC and professors.
4.5 Partners
Obviously,
SCCC is the most crucial partner in the collaboration. Also, we need other
partners to ensure the initiative can be implemented. To utilize website to
connect key participants and resources, IT solution provider is necessary. ITnpp.cn
is an online platform which binds up in providing low-cost and even free IT
solutions to NPO or social initiative. The fees of domain and cloud server may
be under 2000 RMB per year [7] - it can be divvied up with all co-sponsors, or may
be fulfilled by external financial supporters. For instance, some companies can
invest in this initiative, and in return, their logos will be put on hafee.org and they will receive good reputation and more brand
awareness.
5. Conflicts Identification and Resolution
This
initiative will consists of a NPO, several universities’ faculties,
numerous target elders, volunteers and psychological students. It is
foreseeable that there will be various unavoidable conflicts generated among so
many parties. Thus we should pick out some main conflicts and analyze the
scenario, concerned parties and causes, and propose possible resolutions in
advance.
5.1 Name and ownership of initiative and website
Both
the collaborative initiative and its website need a simple but profound name,
and the name will determine their ownership and developing room in the future.
We and SCCC are the co-sponsors
of the initiative, but considering the end beneficiaries are not the students,
volunteers and any sponsor, but the empty-nest elders, thereby we advise to
name the initiative as “Holistic Aids for Empty-nest Elders”, and the website
domain will be the abbreviation of the initiative, www.hafee.org. Why use
“Holistic” rather than “Psychological”? Because the original intention of the
initiative is to provide better and more comprehensive services and helps to
empty-nest elders; and in the future the target group may have other demands,
such as learning, tourist and marriage, we cannot create a series of websites
for satisfying different demands of a same group. Therefore, for HAFEE developing well, we are willing to let SCCC have the ownership of the website.
Meanwhile, both SCCC and we should facilitate a committee, including representatives
from multi-parties, to cooperate the initiative.
5.2 Student application and selection
This
process may bring conflicts among students or universities. One issue is, if
each psychological unit organizes students to apply offline at their
faculty, and then select the “excellent” students to SCCC, since each faculty’s
selecting criteria may be much differential, the application results may be
unfair for some students. Another issue is, if all student candidates will be
selected by SCCC, it may mind the universities’ reputation and prefer PKU and
BNU to CNU and CCMU, although the differences of psychological education and
students’ capacities may be very limited; or purposely keep the student number
of each university at an equal level. Apparently, these two situations are both
unfair and risky. As the university party, we think four steps can avoid these
issues:
(1) We and SCCC jointly make uniform selecting criteria; (2) We
play a mobilizing role and guide students individually submit application
online; (3) We will engage
in UI design of the application webpage, make sure that the application format
is fair for students from different universities and easy to filtered by
selector; while the application records will not display any university’s information; (4) Let SCCC take charge in applicant
selection and interview; and SCCC cannot inquire about applicants’ universities
before the matching results are made.
5.3 Matching up and service quality
Whether
the student volunteer can match with the empty-nest elder mutually will
influence the service quality and result. In addition to selection criteria, we
also plan to use the existing academic result to make another criteria for
household service volunteers roughly judge their target elders whether have psychological
problems. If so, they can show standardized symptom description to applicants
on the website for ensuring application effectiveness and avoiding private
issue.
Another
measure is to require each student volunteer must participate in training
before they begin the psychological service. The training designed by SCCC and
us includes skills of psychological service, empty-nest elder service and
incident dealing, and students can learn the target elders’ particular
situation from SCCC and his/her partner (the household service volunteer).
We
also suggest appointing some professors and tutors as the university-based
psychological advisors, who will provide guidance if the students meet
professional problems during their voluntary activities. Meanwhile, the
students can propose questions for seeking advice on hafee.org's forum, as well as
the regular offline volunteer conference.
5.4 Service interruption
In
the unlikely event of service interruption, every party would be badly
affected. For reducing the possibility, four prediction schemes should be
established. After the student meeting the target elder once or twice, he/she
should make a psychological service plan with the advisor of his/her
university, which will be related to both the elder’s real situation and the
student’s individual plan – that may enhance the student’s sense of responsibility. If
he/she meets a psychological challenge can hardly be settled, he/she should
timely contact the advisor and SCCC’s officer to apply for more professional
psychological aids rather than unilateral withdrawal. And if he/she completes
the service plan or solves the elder’s underlying problem, his/her faculty and
SCCC will jointly give recognition in corresponding level. Besides, if student
unilateral withdrawal happens, we should arrange some substitutes in advance.
We
would like to adopt the collaborating intention to address most conflicts with
SCCC except the first issue which is suitable to let SCCC gain more direct
payoff. We believe that to regard elder-centric as the common core values, and
to make uniform criteria, optimized processes, systematic training and
prediction schemes as the common structured resolutions will benefit all
parties, especially the elders.[8]
6. Website Functions and Initiative Implementation
According
to above explanation, we will summarize the necessary functions of the virtual
platform, www.hafee.org, and list the key procedures of the initiative
implementation.
6.1 Website functions
Briefly,
the students can submit application via this website; and all volunteers, both
SCCC’s existing volunteers and participating students, professors, alumni and
other partners will have an individual ID to log in the forum to share
knowledge, discuss aiding solutions and organize activities; the website
viewers can learn the initiative via the introduction media and apply for
volunteers and registrants; all users and viewers can browse the initiatives’
newest reports and photos and know the contributions of excellent volunteers.
6.2 Initiative Implementation
To
implement HAFEE smoothly, we will spent much time on the preparation phase; and
for efficiency, we advise to split preparing work into three aspects, Initiative,
Psychology and Technology, and deploy them in same time. After website
establishment, SCCC and we will be respectively in charge of implementing different
tasks online or offline. The particular tasks, order, participants and status
are listed in the following table.
#
|
PIC
|
Support
|
Tasks
|
Status
|
1
|
SCCC
|
Universities
|
(Initiative
preparation)
Register initiative
Design logo
Prepare introduction and explanation materials
Make contract with ITnpp
|
Offline
|
1
|
SCCC
|
ITnpp
|
(Technology
preparation)
Purchase domain
Rent cloud server
Design initiative’s logo and website
|
Online
|
1
|
Universities (administrators and professors)
|
SCCC
|
(Psychology
preparation)
Make criteria of students selection and elders
psychological judgment
Appoint university-based advisors
Prepare training and prediction schemes
|
Offline
|
2
|
ITnpp
|
SCCC
|
Establish the website
|
Online
|
3
|
SCCC
|
Universities
|
Test the website
Add content
Select and upload elders’ information
|
Online
|
4
|
Univ.
|
Motivate students
Release promotion via diverse
channels
|
Offline
Online
|
|
5
|
Stud.
|
Application
|
Online
|
|
6
|
SCCC
|
Filter and interview applicants
Match students with elders and
existing volunteers
|
Offline
|
|
7
|
Students
|
SCCC
|
Launch training and seminar
|
Offline
|
8
|
Students and volunteers
|
SCCC
|
Face-to-face
service with target elder
|
Offline
|
8
|
Students, volunteers and other participants
|
Share knowledge and experiences, seek helpful solutions for elders in need, organize offline activities
|
Online
|
|
9
|
SCCC
|
Universities
|
Regularly appraise volunteers’
performance and give recognition
|
Offline
Online
|
*
|
Universities (CCMU)
|
SCCC
|
Provide high-level
psychological aids if needed
|
Offline
|
7. Adding Value for All Stakeholders
Based
on common purpose, friendly negotiation and detailed planning, we are sure that
HAFEE will bring expected benefits for all stakeholders, and some additional
value as well.
For
us, our students will obtain psychological practice experience before
qualification certificate examination and graduation, that will become an
essential step of their coming career. Also, volunteer experiences will show persuasive
image with their potential employers. The well network linked with other volunteers
may help them in the future. These favorable factors will gradually enhance our
four units’ graduate employment rate and social responsibility reputation.
Besides, the psychology-related data collected from empty-nest elders will be valuable
for professors’ further studies.
For
SCCC, their low-cost but very crucial investment will exchange external sources
and expertise to improve their voluntary service for the target group; while
the broader business will bring better exposure and attention from public
and professional fields. Their current volunteers will learn
psychological knowledge, acquire wider recognition and incentive and be able to
freely organize diverse activities to fulfill themselves.
The
most important is, for the empty-nest elders, they will gain more
concerns from more participants and the society. In further, some early psychological
problems may be addressed by chatting and company with the young volunteers.
If they have potential mental hazards, they will be suggested to accept more professional
and formal treatment. In addition, some personal problems in daily life of them
will be also aided by online discussion and resources integration.
8. Conclusion
In
this document of Holistic Aids for Empty-nest Elders, a social initiative co-launched
by Beijing’s four universities and SCCC, we did a comprehensive elaboration of
the collaboration’s purpose, strategy, approach, key preconditions, possible
conflicts and implementation planning. Also we analyzed how the collaboration would add
value to each stakeholder.
HAFEE can be regarded as a promising ecosystem. In view of long-term development, it will have a positive influence among society - to advocate more people to pay attention to the elders who need help and more concerns. Then, when this influence spreads, there will be more social resources invested in by other NPOs, enterprises, universities, government and other institutions. All these participants will be recognized and praised for what they contribute to the target group and society. And at last, the will get benefits from this functioning and sustainable ecosystem. Thereby, we believe HAFEE will bring profound influence to the elders and society and win-win outcomes to all participants, and then attract more attention from public and enable more elders to get more concerns and more holistic aids. And we also expect this collaboration model can be verified in reality and replicated in other cities and industries.
HAFEE can be regarded as a promising ecosystem. In view of long-term development, it will have a positive influence among society - to advocate more people to pay attention to the elders who need help and more concerns. Then, when this influence spreads, there will be more social resources invested in by other NPOs, enterprises, universities, government and other institutions. All these participants will be recognized and praised for what they contribute to the target group and society. And at last, the will get benefits from this functioning and sustainable ecosystem. Thereby, we believe HAFEE will bring profound influence to the elders and society and win-win outcomes to all participants, and then attract more attention from public and enable more elders to get more concerns and more holistic aids. And we also expect this collaboration model can be verified in reality and replicated in other cities and industries.
9. References
[1] Universities information:
PKU: http://www.psy.pku.edu.cn/; BNU: http://psych.bnu.edu.cn/; CNU: http://www.cnucoe.cn/cnucoe/; CCMU: http://www.ccmu.edu.cn/;
[2] Data of Beijing's empty-nest elders: http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/20130105/1220583.shtml;
[3] Usual Psychological problems of Empty-nest Elderly:
http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/20130105/1220583.shtmlhttp://bjchs.org.cn/html/jingshenweisheng/20130201/35132.html;
[4] N.Venkatraman and John C. Henderson, Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing, Sloan Management Review, 1998;
[5] Beijing An Ding Hospital: http://www.bjad.com.cn/article/?sid=106;
[6] Article about Psychological counselors: http://baike.baidu.com/view/28434.htm#3;
[7] IT-related inforamtion: Website builder: http://web.itnpp.cn/; Domain and Cloud server: http://www.net.cn;
[8] J. Weiss and J. Hughes, Want Collaboration? Accept – and Actively Manage – Conflict, Harvard Business Review, 2005;
[9] Tompson, Win-Win Negotiation, Expanding the Pie;
[10] M. Lynne Markus, Brook Manville and Carole E. Agres, What Makes a Virtual Organization Work?, Sloan Management Review, 2000;
[11] W. Ebner, J. M. Leimeister and H. Krcmar, Trust in Virtual Healthcare Communities: Design and Implementation of Trust-Enabling Functionalities, System Sciences, 2004;
[12] Kenneth W.Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann introduced their Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, 1974
PKU: http://www.psy.pku.edu.cn/; BNU: http://psych.bnu.edu.cn/; CNU: http://www.cnucoe.cn/cnucoe/; CCMU: http://www.ccmu.edu.cn/;
[2] Data of Beijing's empty-nest elders: http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/20130105/1220583.shtml;
[3] Usual Psychological problems of Empty-nest Elderly:
http://finance.china.com.cn/industry/20130105/1220583.shtmlhttp://bjchs.org.cn/html/jingshenweisheng/20130201/35132.html;
[4] N.Venkatraman and John C. Henderson, Real Strategies for Virtual Organizing, Sloan Management Review, 1998;
[5] Beijing An Ding Hospital: http://www.bjad.com.cn/article/?sid=106;
[6] Article about Psychological counselors: http://baike.baidu.com/view/28434.htm#3;
[7] IT-related inforamtion: Website builder: http://web.itnpp.cn/; Domain and Cloud server: http://www.net.cn;
[8] J. Weiss and J. Hughes, Want Collaboration? Accept – and Actively Manage – Conflict, Harvard Business Review, 2005;
[9] Tompson, Win-Win Negotiation, Expanding the Pie;
[10] M. Lynne Markus, Brook Manville and Carole E. Agres, What Makes a Virtual Organization Work?, Sloan Management Review, 2000;
[11] W. Ebner, J. M. Leimeister and H. Krcmar, Trust in Virtual Healthcare Communities: Design and Implementation of Trust-Enabling Functionalities, System Sciences, 2004;
[12] Kenneth W.Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann introduced their Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, 1974
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