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Social Enterprise for Elderly Housing: Policy for Accountability and Public-Private Responsible Financing

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Abstract

The ageing of societies around the world increases demand on service providers of elderly housing. Such organizations are meant to be both knowledge- and service-intensive, and considered socially responsible enterprises providing human services to care for the elderly, a vulnerable group in society. Nevertheless, there are concerns over their performance and adequacy of resources allocated for operations under a growingly ageing population. To deal with the potential moral hazard, a hybrid, responsible financing model for a social enterprise offering elderly housing would provide a more desirable structure than a purely private equity seeking profit or a non-profit setting that relies entirely on public funding. A conceptual framework is proposed to reveal the relevance of a governance system with a complementary performance measurement system to monitor performance of social enterprises in fulfilling their social responsibilities. This study further explores quality deficiencies in homes for the elderly within the case of postcolonial Hong Kong. It suggests relevance of this framework to accountability and quality performance of elderly housing as social enterprises. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it argues that the policy makers need to emphasize accountability for performance enhanced by a governance system under a public-private responsible financing model aiming to safeguard the dignity of the elderly and social sustainability.

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Notes

  1. In particular, the sex ratios of men among the old people aged 80 years or above in Asia are much higher (70 men per 100 women) than those of Europe and Northern America (50 men per 100 women and 60 men per 100 women) (The United Nations 2013).

  2. The United Nations has developed United Nations-supported Principals for Responsible Investment Initiatives (UNPRI, 2016) in an attempt to reinforce more responsible investments around the world. According to UNPRI, “Responsible investment is an approach to investment that explicitly acknowledges the relevance to the investor of environmental, social and governance factors, and of the long-term health and stability of the market as a whole; it recognises that the generation of long-term sustainable returns is dependent on stable, well-functioning and well governed social, environmental and economic systems.”

  3. The financial reserve as managed and reported by Hong Kong Monetary Authority under its Exchange Fund in January 2016 amounts to US$ 357 billion equivalent.

  4. An incident was uncovered by the press that the staff of a privately run elderly home frequently gathered a group of elderly residents and made them queue naked or semi-naked on a podium and exposed openly (Lin 2015).

  5. Subsequent to an incident reported by the press that the staff of a RCHE mistreated its elderly residents (Lin 2015), it was questioned in the Legislative Council whether Hong Kong would consider establishing an official accreditation system for the service quality of RCHEs and making public the results of such accreditation for the reference of the public in their selection of RCHEs.

  6. According to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Hong Kong has maintained its reserve assets amounting to US$ 357.0 billion at the end of January 2016. Incidentally, as articulated by Lin (2015) in China Daily Asia on the case of mistreatment in an elderly home in Hong Kong, “A society that doesn’t care about its elderly and doesn’t have the guts to dig into its pockets to fork out the necessary cash for their care doesn’t deserve to survive.”

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge that an earlier version of this paper was presented at the Health Conference organized by College of Professional and Continuing Education (CPCE) of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2016 and are grateful for the comments provided by the reviewers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Professional Education and Executive Development, College of Professional and Continuing Education, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Artie W. Ng & Tiffany C. H. Leung

  2. Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    A. Ka Tat Tsang

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Correspondence to Artie W. Ng.

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Ng, A.W., Leung, T.C.H. & Ka Tat Tsang, A. Social Enterprise for Elderly Housing: Policy for Accountability and Public-Private Responsible Financing. Population Ageing 13, 365–384 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12062-018-9235-5

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