At 10 a.m. on Sunday, Wei Zhenyu appeared at the door of a nursing home in Beijing on time. The 30-year-old works normally on weekdays, but has a new identity on weekends - "sharing children". The old lady's memory was good and bad, but when she saw Wei Zhenyu, her eyes lit up: "You're here again." Wei Zhenyu sat down and took out his mobile phone to make a video call. On the other side of the screen is the old lady's daughter in the United States. The three of them chatted about the current situation and also talked about past events that the old lady could not remember clearly. "We are not replacing our children, we are just filling in when they are too busy." Wei Zhenyu said.
In recent years, the supply of domestic elderly care services has mostly focused on rigid life care such as meal assistance, bathing assistance, and medical assistance. The supply of family companionship and spiritual comfort services for the elderly has been relatively insufficient. The huge emotional gap has given rise to door-to-door companionship services such as "shared children".
Individuals and organizations explore the road together
On a certain social platform, related notes with the keywords "shared children" and "community children" have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times; on a certain personal trading platform, many users have long-term provided services such as "visiting the elderly on behalf of others", including daily visits, accompanying doctors and doctors, purchasing daily necessities, etc., and even helping the elderly resolve disputes. The price of such services generally ranges from 30 yuan to 100 yuan per hour.
Wei Zhenyu’s entry into the industry originated from a post on a social platform. He posted a post saying that he could help people visit elderly people living alone. The post unexpectedly became popular, and hundreds of children in need and service providers who wanted to take orders poured into the communication group he established.
In Nanjing, 24-year-old Heng Mengyu took a more systematic path. At the end of 2025, he began to brew the "Shared Family Friend" project, which was officially put into operation in July this year. The team has expanded from 1 to 9 people, with about 20 new orders per month, and a single service of 2 to 3 hours. The members hold at least relevant professional certificates such as psychological counselors and health managers.
The portrait of Heng Mengyu's service targets is very clear: elderly people who live alone, have children who live in different places, are widowed or have lost children, cannot use smart devices, and lack enthusiasm for life. Aunt Zhou, 82, lives alone and has suffered from cancer. She has spent nearly one million yuan on health care products over the years and even owed foreign debt. Heng Mengyu stayed with her for several months, helping her identify scams and guiding her back to a healthy life.
Wei Zhenyu and Heng Mengyu represent the two main service supply methods currently on the market. The former is about individual orders, which is flexible but unstable; the latter is about institutional operations, which has a team, thresholds, and regulations, but is still far from scale.
Supply and demand mismatch needs to be reconciled
The "2025 National Bulletin on the Development of Aging" released by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Office on Aging shows that as of the end of 2025, the country's elderly population aged 60 and above has exceeded 320 million. The "Basic Data Bulletin of the Fifth China Sample Survey on Living Conditions of the Elderly in Urban and Rural Areas" shows that in 2021, 14.2% of my country's elderly people live alone.
The reporter observed that many elderly people living alone have been lacking family communication for a long time and feel lonely. Existing elderly care services have limited coverage of spiritual companionship. Children who work in other places and have little ability to divide their time, in addition to caring about the elderly's emotions, also need someone to help observe the elderly's condition on the spot and provide timely feedback on risks. The national standard "Basic Standards for Service Quality of Elderly Care Institutions" has clearly required that elderly care institutions should urge relevant third parties to visit the elderly on a regular basis. However, when children are unable to be present, this "supervision" is often difficult to implement.
Beijing citizen Zhao Ming's father has been living in a local nursing home for almost two years. As an only son, Zhao Ming is usually busy with work and has difficulty accompanying him on time. In his opinion, the purpose of finding a "shared child" is to find someone who can observe carefully and give truthful feedback to help him see the true state of the old man when he is not present.
However, in the process of testing the market, this new business format has gradually shown a tendency to provide assembly-line services. When Zhao Ming browsed the platform, he found that many service providers used fixed phrases, clearly marked prices for gifts and chat time, and lacked empathy and patience.
There is no shortage of willing participants on the supply side. Wei Zhenyu's feeling is very direct: some college students want to work part-time, and some middle-aged people in their 40s and 50s also want to try it, but there are still only a few who can provide continuous services. More importantly, there are not many families willing to pay and continue to place orders.
"Spiritual companionship is a 'non-standard product'. Each elderly person's personality and family situation are different, so it is difficult to make a standardized product for mass promotion." Wei Zhenyu said that many elderly people themselves are not very receptive to the consumption of spiritual companionship. They generally do not think it is a rigid need and are also more sensitive to price.
Gradually standardize and promote long-term
In 2025, the "Guidelines for the Construction of Standard System for Elderly Care Services (2025 Edition)" jointly issued by the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the National Standardization Administration Committee clearly included "spiritual comfort services" into the standard system for the provision of elderly care services. But there is still a long way to go from standards on paper to implementation.
For this type of new business format, legal professionals remind that consumption risks cannot be ignored. During the care process, if the elderly suddenly falls or becomes ill, or the service personnel themselves are injured, if there is no clear contract, disputes over the division of responsibilities can easily arise; if the platform fails to perform background checks and safety education obligations, it may also be required to bear corresponding fault liability. More importantly, paying for companionship services does not exempt children from their legal obligations as caregivers.
Heng Mengyu's team has developed a set of internal control methods on its own: employees must hold professional certificates related to elderly care and receive pre-job training. The entire service process is recorded. They only provide services such as companionship, science popularization, and home safety inspections. After each service, they provide feedback to their families or the community about the elderly's condition.
Similar companionship services are also being explored overseas, with different ideas: There is a platform in the United States that integrates elderly companionship services into the insurance system and relies on an insurance payment mechanism to reduce the risk of loneliness for the elderly. Practitioners have undergone background checks and are equipped with liability insurance; related services in Japan adopt a subscription system and a long-term door-to-door model of fixed personnel to reduce the trust gap caused by unfamiliar matches.
Various parts of the country are also exploring different paths. The "community children" service station model has already appeared in places such as Shijiazhuang, Hebei, Zibo, Shandong, and Dingxi, Gansu. Its core feature is that the government provides venues and preferential policies to attract elderly care institutions to cooperate in operations. Taking Shijiazhuang as an example, the "Community Children" service was explored and implemented by elderly care companies under the guidance and support of the Civil Affairs Bureau. The service station provides 24-hour intelligent vital sign monitoring, life services and spiritual services, mainly for the elderly and elderly people living alone in the community.
Experts believe that the community mutual aid model has venue, standards and policy support; the market-oriented "shared children" model is more flexible and easy to establish deep emotional connections with the elderly, but generally faces difficulties such as narrow customer acquisition channels. The combination of the two can just complement each other. The community can refer elderly people who are willing to pay to the market service provider, and the market service provider can also obtain a stable source of customers through the community network. At the institutional level, at least three things need to be implemented: first, purchase liability insurance for practitioners to clarify service boundaries and risk sharing; second, establish a special training and certified employment mechanism with elderly care companionship as a service; third, explore the inclusion of spiritual companionship in the pilot scope of government purchased services or long-term care insurance.
Talking about the next step, Wei Zhenyu is trying to expand customer sources through self-media, and is also considering cooperation with communities and nursing homes. Heng Mengyu is promoting the professional upgrading of the team and plans to include "documentary records of the elderly's life stories" as a special service so that the elderly can treasure this exclusive record.
Reporter Lin Yujin
