Recruitment challenges facing elderly care service providers in Hong Kong

Abstract

The present survey study was conducted to examine the challenges facing the elderly care service industry in Hong Kong. The survey was designed based on a qualitative study conducted earlier and was aiming to examine the recruitment challenges facing Hong Kong's elderly care service providers and their perceptions of the latest elderly policy, ‘Ageing in Place’. The results resonated with an earlier qualitative study, strengthening the findings that recruitment of frontline care workers remained the major difficulty facing many elderly care service providers, and that maintaining a stable frontline care workforce can be done only with an effective preparation of the workforce through adequate education and training, along with a well-structured career prospect and reasonable competitive remuneration. Nevertheless, many elderly service providers supported the concept of ‘Ageing in Place’ and it can only be facilitated with an aged-friendly environment and by promoting the culture of intergenerational harmony in Hong Kong.