Teppo Kröger

Community Care in Taiwan: Mere Talk, No Policy

SUMMARY This article explores the policy definitions and the funder roles of central and local governments in community care in Taiwan. The notion of community care has been adopted in Taiwan following the model of Hong Kong but the main question of the article is whether this has resulted in actual service provisions at the community level, forming an alternative to institutional care. The data has been collected from several sources: policy documents, official statistics, surveys, general reports, funding provision reports, and empirical studies. The results show that neither central nor local authorities are seriously involved in caring for elderly people or persons with disabilities in Taiwans communities. In Taiwan, community care for these groups of people still means, in practice, informal care provided by female family members without any support from public policies.