Silver Generation Officers Involved in Outreach and Home Visit Activities

Ms Mariam Jaafar asked the Minister for Health (a) how many Silver Generation Office ambassadors and staff are currently engaged in outreach activities; and (b) in each of the last three years, how many (i) home visits and (ii) telephone check-ins have been conducted.

The Silver Generation Office (SGO) has deployed about 3,000 staff and volunteers as Silver Generation Ambassadors (SGAs) to proactively reach out to seniors.

Since 2014, SGO has made over one million engagements. In 2019, SGO made 339,000 home visits. In 2020, SGO adapted their engagement approaches during the COVID-19 pandemic and made 140,000 home visits, complemented by an additional 140,000 telephone check-ins.

In 2021, SGO pivoted to encouraging and assisting our seniors’ COVID-19 vaccinations, reaching out to 168,000 and 11,000 seniors through home visits and telephone check-ins respectively.

I think a lot has been raised in this House of the concerns for the mental wellness of our elderly. As the COVID-19 pandemic drags on, it has been quite a while since some of them have had house visits. Can the Ministry also talk about the forward-looking plans? Will we bring the house visits back to the level of about 300,000 and when will that happen?

I thank the Member for the questions. Indeed, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a shift in the way SGO reaches out to these seniors. To move forward, we also need to understand the genesis of the SGO. SGO was previously known as the Pioneer Generation Office (PGO) and it was established to reach out to Pioneers relating to the PG package and tell them about the various Government schemes, MediShield and CHAS.

When it then evolved in April 2019 to merge with AIC, the expanded scope was then to reach out to another bigger group. So, initially, it was a smaller group; and it extended to a bigger group. That was for the Merdeka Generation Package.

In 2020, SGO then had to adjust and pivot, to shift into doing house visits as well as tele-engagements with the vulnerable group. And this is also something that we need to continue looking at. I understand the concerns because the elderly are at home and they are not able to engage. There are a lot of efforts that we are doing with other partners as well, to make sure that this engagement continues.

We recognise that SGO's mandate is now to go beyond just communicating Government schemes to better address their needs in a more targeted manner. So, SGO has been working with the Regional Health Systems clusters, primary care and community care Partners to instil preventive health messaging in seniors in the community, so that they can also augment the support and engagement that they, through the SGAs, have been giving.

We are hoping to continue to build on this relationship, so that we can expand that effort and also look at targeting areas, especially with more frequent visits to at-risk seniors, including those who are frail or have weak social support. We are also enhancing the competency of the SGAs to engage our seniors more effectively, so that they can continue to stay active and mentally engaged as well.