Aged care

21 November 2011

Question No. 14

Name of person: Mr Christopher de Souza

Question

To ask the Minister for Health (a) whether he will provide an update on how the Government will help create an environment to care for Singapore's growing elderly population; and (b) whether the Ministry will consider more home-based healthcare services or retirement villages as options for our elderly to age and be cared for gracefully.

Answer

1. I thank Mr de Souza for his question. Yes, a key goal of the Ministerial Committee on Ageing (MCA) is indeed to facilitate ageing-in-place, that is, to enable seniors to age gracefully and be cared for where they live for as long as possible. 

2. In other countries, there are retirement villages or continuing care retirement communities which are housing options that come with aged care. However, in Singapore, the majority of our population is housed in HDB estates. As the HDB population ages in place, we already have “naturally occurring retirement communities” in our public housing estates.

3. The key challenge is therefore how to retrofit and integrate care services into our mature HDB housing estates to help seniors age in place. We aim to achieve this in a few ways. First, we will make our flats and towns more senior friendly, such that seniors can lead independent, active and meaningful lives. The Marine Parade pilot is a first step in this direction, where we are testing out intra-flat retrofits and improving town infrastructure to make it easier and safer for seniors to move around. The outcomes of our test bed at Marine Parade will help us devise strategies to scale such programmes to the rest of Singapore.

4. Second, we hope to diversify and enhance the range of care options, especially home help, home medical and home nursing services such that seniors can be cared for in their homes even when they are frail or fall sick. We are also expanding the capacity of end-of-life care services, both in terms of inpatient hospice facilities and home palliative services. As we enhance the range of home care services, we will also review our subsidy framework to keep home care affordable. We will also look into ways to enhance centre-based services such as day rehabilitation facilities and locate them conveniently in the community for accessibility. Notwithstanding, we recognize that there will still be seniors who may require more intensive care for certain periods of time. Therefore, we will also continue to enhance institutional care such as nursing homes for those who require such services. However, we would locate these near or within communities, so that their loved ones can visit them often and they can continue to be a part of the community.

5. Third, we want to support those who care for seniors in their homes. We hope to step up efforts to empower care-givers with the proper skills and make respite care, emergency services and counseling support more accessible. 

6. Our society will age significantly in the next 10 to 15 years, and we need to start to invest in infrastructure and services now, to support ageing in place as the need for aged care grows in the future. The Ministerial Committee on Ageing aims to release a master-plan next year, which will detail initiatives to facilitate ageing-in-place. The Committee will work with various stakeholders to achieve our vision of making this a city for all ages and one which empowers seniors to age in place. We need to work with the private sector and voluntary welfare organizations to scale up services and to professionalise aged care. We need to work with grassroots organizations and VWOs to outreach and support seniors who may live alone and have no children to care for them. Above all, we need to work with all Singaporeans, to support, care for and be gracious to seniors living among us.