Population aging and the increasing cancer rates in both China and the United States have drawn significant scholarly attention to the caregiving issues in cancer patients’ families. However, few research has synthesized and compared the caregiving experiences of cancer patients’ family members in these two countries. Qualitative Meta-Synthesis is suitable to examine the homogeneity and heterogeneity of family caregiving experiences in the two countries, providing empirical data to construct a comprehensive support system for family caregivers in China. Adopting Qualitative Meta-Synthesis method, this study includes 32 relevant studies: 19 focusing Chinese family caregivers, 13 on American family caregivers. Four primary themes are identified, that includes negative experience, positive experience, existing support, care needs, each with various secondary and tertiary themes. The diversity of caregiving experiences in the two countries is highlighted through these secondary and tertiary themes. We have also identified four main structural elements contributing to this heterogeneity: cultural factors related to cancer and caregiving, healthcare systems, employment security, health insurance systems, and belief systems.

The rapid development of child-friendly city construction has led to increasing attention on the creation of child-friendly communities. However, challenges remain, including a lack of depth in research, a monotonous practical process, and unsatisfactory service outcomes in child-friendly community building. This paper emphasizes the community’s overall strengths in public service provision, the protection of children’s rights and spatial planning. Based on the case of “walking school bus” and starting from the perspective of children’s independent activity, this paper tends to construct an integrated action framework for building child-friendly communities that addresses both value advocacy and practical strategies.

Under the guidance of the national social service purchase and evaluation policy, the professional service evaluation of social work stations in towns (sub-districts) across China has been shaped by the integration of various theoretical frameworks including positivism and constructivism. The professional service assessment of social work stations in towns (sub-districts) has undergone 14 years of development since 2010 in G city in the Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area, which could be characterized into five distinct stages: initial, decentralized, unified, optimized, and transformed. Each stage exhibits both similarities and differences in terms of goals, subjects, content systems, and other aspects. The logical evolution of professional service evaluation is reflected in three levels of “context value tool”: First, ate the context level, the evolution reflects in the transition of government departments from exploration and cultivation to precise management of the social work profession; Second, at the value level, it illustrate a shift in the evaluation system from professional supremacy to a dual emphasis on both professional and administrative aspects; Third, at the tool level, the evolution is characterized by a change in data collection methods from from qualitative approaches to a hybrid evaluation model. Based on the logical evolution of administrative orientation and technological rationality, the operational framework of social work stations in towns (sub-districts) needs to address several critical issues, including the challenges of the alienation of supervisory functions, the prevalence of short-term task-oriented service styles, the weakening of service recipients’ participation, and the balancing of refined evaluation practices.

Drawing on the data from the “Chinese Social Survey 2023”, this study utilizes the Ordinary Least Squares regression (OLS regression) to dissect the influence of internet usage frequency on the volunteer service participation of the grey-haired group. The research findings demonstrate that, in general, the participation rates of the grey-haired group in volunteer services are comparatively low, and the varieties of volunteer services are restricted in China. Notably, the frequency of internet usage exhibits a significant positive correlation with the grey-haired group’s volunteer service participation, which means that the more frequently they use the internet, the higher their level of engagement in volunteer services. In addition, social capital can also have a marked and positive impact on the grey-haired group’s volunteer service participation. However, it does not serve as a mediator between internet usage and engagement in voluntary services. Consequently, initiatives aimed at promoting active aging, enhancing the digital literacy of the grey-haired group and optimizing the internet’s transformative potential in relation to the grey-haired group’s social capital are crucial for facilitating the grey-haired group’s participation in volunteer services.

The introduction of professional social work organizations in the project system plays an important role in improving the quality of community governance. While existing studies have examined the process, difficulties, and effects of social work intervention in community service, they often neglect how community organizations consolidate service achievements after project completion. The practice of the Neighborhood Committee of S Community in C City shows that, when faced with challenges following the completion of a social work project, the community has adopted a series of practical mechanisms guided by “adaptive restructuring” through “survival coping strategies”, “development coping strategies” and “supportive coping strategies”. These mechanisms include nurturing successors, division of labor, mobilizing community activists, and finding partners to ensure the continuity of service. In order to realize the long-term sustainable development of community services, it is essential not only to ensure the high-quality implementation of the project but also to focus on cultivating the self-sufficiency of the community, establishing stable cooperative relations, and promoting the long-term construction of community self-organization.

With the continuous expansion of government-funded social work services, social work is emerging as a vital professional force in social governance, garnering increasing attention from both the government and society. A significant challenge confronting the field is how to evaluate the professionalism and effectiveness of its services scientifically. The CIPP model, known for its systematic, comprehensive, and improvement-oriented approach, is particularly suited for evaluating social work projects. This study employs the CIPP model to evaluate the rural childcare program of Institution H, integrating the Delphi method to construct an evaluation index system that supplements and optimizes the existing framework. Through assessments of the project’s context, input, process, and outcomes, the study provides improvement recommendations, such as increasing the budget for enhancing social workers’ professional capabilities, deepening needs assessments, prioritizing service quality, refining service plans, and improving supervision efficiency. To refine and optimize the social work evaluation system, it is crucial to establish a feedback-oriented evaluation mechanism, emphasize the professional development of social work, and shift from audit-focused evaluations to empowerment-based assessments. This approach ensures the dual objectives of performance evaluation and professional growth, ultimately achieving “improvement through evaluation” and “correction through evaluation.”

In the pursuit of joint construction, collaborative governance and shared benefits, the younger elderly represent a vital force in fostering grassroots governance within communities. However, their participation encounters various obstacles, such as challenges related to the integration of stakeholders, the fragmentation of grassroots participation activities, and the misalignment between supply and demand. This paper examines these obstacles through the lans of an obstacle logic framework centered on “relationship-motivation”. It reveals that communities often take strategic compromises due to external constraints and competing interests, which weakens cooperative support on the supply side while eliminates the participation motivation on the demand side. Moreover, the interplay between the supply and the demand sides further hinders elderly’s participation in grassroots governance initiatives. Therefore, it is crucial to enhance the emphasis on the supply side and amplify the demand side expressions to facilitate efficient and smooth resource and information flows, thereby encouraging the younger elderly to participate in the construction of grassroots governance and realize co-construction, co-governance and sharing.

The mechanism of the “Linkage of Five Elements in the community” has been integrated into the development of social work stations, playing a crucial role in innovating grassroots social governance. This study investigates optimization pathways for collaborative governance within this framework through a case study approach grounded in collaborative governance theory, drawing on empirical data from social work station practices in Zhejiang Province, China. Research has found that the development of resources related to the “Linkage of Five Elements in the community” follows a structred pattern. The collaborative governance of the mechanism of “Five Elements Linkage” unfolds in three sequential phases: “forming governance concepts”, “constructing governance mechanisms”, and “improving governance effectiveness”. These phases are characterized by platform-based integration, localized adaptation, and professionalization, with vertical-horizontal synergies facilitating multi-agent coordination. However, challenges persist, including tensions between service objectives and implementation processes, inadequate resource mobilization and inter-agent collaboration, limited capacity for sustainable synergy, and insufficient professionalization. To address these issues, the study proposes optimization strategies that emphasize motivational alignment, endogenous capacity-building, and institutional restructuring. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity of leveraging the Party-government leadership to empower stakeholders, foster consensus-driven goals, and catalyze collective action. Ultimately, this framework aims to enhance service quality and activate community endogenous vitality, offering both theoretical and practical insights for refining collaborative governance models in grassroots social innovation contexts.

Through text mining based on the community home care service policy texts issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, The State Council and relevant departments, this research innovatively adopts TM-PMC to construct a quantitative evaluation index system for community home care service policy, offering countermeasures and suggestions for sustainable development and improvement of community home care service policy. Twelve representative policies are selected and evaluated. The results show that among the twelve selected policies, two are classified as excellent, eight as good, and two policies as acceptable, with no policies deemed bad. The overall quality of the community home care service policy is satisfactory, although there remains potential for futher development and enhancement. Based on these findings, suggestions are put forward to improvement.

The assessment of policy effectiveness has focused on measuring the extent to which the overall policy goals have been achieved. Guided by the theoretical model of policy goal achievement evaluation, this paper establishes an index system that integrates both factual data and value-based criteria to evaluate policy effectiveness and identify influencing factors. This paper adopts the multi-dimensional evaluation method which includes eight key dimensions: benefit, efficiency, adequacy, economy, fairness, responsiveness, appropriateness and stability. Data were collected through questionnaire survey and expert interview in Gansu and Shaanxi provinces. The analytic hierarchy process was used to determine the weight of indicators, while the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method quantified the policy effect. The results show that the overall effectiveness of the policy is high, especially in terms of adequacy and benefit, while f responsiveness and fairness demonstrate lower performance. Disparities exist between urban and rural areas as well as regional differences. Further analysis of the factors influencing policy effectiveness, employing the Horn-Mitter model, revealed that policy objectives and standards, resources, implementation and intervention, and environmental conditions significantly affect outcomes. The research shows that policy implementation and intervention are the core of policy effectiveness, while policy standards and objectives play a “baton” role. It is recommended that policymakers prioritize fairness and responsiveness in future policy formulations, and enhance urban-rural and regional equity to batter meet the needs of the elderly.