The rehabilitation and care center in Nantong's Hai'an city celebrates the 76th birthday for Huang Guojun. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Nantong in East China's Jiangsu province has explored a sustainable elder care mode that breaks boundaries of institutions, communities, and home-based elder care.

Nantong is reputed for its longevity and was marked as an aging society as early as 1982, 17 years earlier than the country.

Statistics from the seventh national census by the National Bureau of Statistics in 2020 show that Nantong was home to more than 2.3 million residents aged above 60, accounting for 30.01 percent of its permanent residents.

Faced with the urgent demand for elder care, the city has sought a sustainable service by providing professional nursing from institutions to local communities and households.

All the new residential communities in Nantong are required to construct buildings for elder care while old communities also need to ensure every 100 households have 20 square meters of elder care housing.

Nurses at a nursing institution assist elderly people with stretches. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Community-based elder care facilities in the city are now managed and operated by professional nursing institutions.

The intelligent elder care service platform in Chongchuan district has also launched a toll-free hotline to provide 24-hour voice service for homebound senior citizens.

In 2015, Nantong explored building a basic care insurance system and was listed among the first 15 pilot cities for a long-term care insurance system in China the next year.

As of the end of June, the care insurance fund had expended more than 1.8 billion yuan ($245.17 million), benefiting about 56,000 local residents.

Currently, Nantong is home to 2,331 elder care service facilities with a combined 92,000 beds that feature seamless connections between institutions, communities, and home-based elder care.