THE INNOVATIONS IN WELFARE POLICY FOR THE ELDERLY OF LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATIONS IN EASTERN REGION

Abstract

            The purpose of this study was to study the formulation of welfare policy for the elderly, and the elderly welfare policy innovation by analyzing the policy formulation from the vision, budget and projects/activities related to welfare for the elderly of 222 local administrative organizations in the eastern region. Using document data related to administrative and budget policies and with content analysis and descriptive statistics were identified and described as follows: the results of the "vision" analysis showed that almost all local administrative organizations did not have direct welfare policies for the elderly. However, most local government organizations have established policies that showed the importance of caring for the public as a whole, but not specific to a particular group. Therefore, the elderly were counted as beneficiaries of the said policy. There were in total 1,954 projects/activities related to welfare for the elderly. Most of these projects/activities focused on income/career promotion. However, only 374 projects/activities were found to be innovative, accounting for 19.14% of the relevant projects/activities carried out by 146 local government organizations. Most of the innovative projects/activities were related to social security, family, caregiver and protection, while income and occupation were least considered among the innovative projects/activities. When considering the budgetary dimension, it was found that the projects/activities related to the welfare of the elderly with innovative characteristics had the total budget of 48.5 million Baht (2.21%), comparing to the total budget of the projects/activities related to the provision of welfare for the elderly of 2,198.9 million Baht.