Existing Capacity of Senior Care Centres

Ms Lee Li Lian asked the Minister for Health with regard to existing Senior Care Centres (a) what is their current capacity; (b) whether the current capacity is able to meet the demand from the public; and (c) whether there are waiting lists for these Senior Care Centres and, if so, how many people are on the lists and what is the average waiting period.

Today, we have a network of about 60 eldercare day centres providing day services, such as day care and day rehabilitation services. This network of centres has a total capacity to serve 2,800 seniors.

To better serve our seniors who may have different needs, the Government has launched Senior Care Centres (SCCs) last year. SCCs are part of the

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Government's efforts to provide aged care and support facilities within the community so that more seniors can age within the community and close to their loved ones. SCCs are new integrated day eldercare facilities that provide a range of aged care services, such as day care, dementia day care, day rehabilitation and basic nursing services, to holistically meet the needs of seniors needing care. This integration of services under one roof at the SCCs reduces the need for seniors to travel to different day centres to access different services.

In the past year, we have developed three new SCCs7 − one each in the Central, Eastern and Northern regions, which can serve about 230 seniors in total. Currently, there are still vacancies available at these SCCs, as well as in the network of day care centres and day rehabilitative centres. However, as clients generally prefer centres near their residential locations, there are about 350 seniors who are currently on the wait list for various centre-based care services, and the average waiting time to placement is between 20 to 50 days depending on the location.

To enhance the geographical distribution of services and in anticipation of an increase in demand for day care services that will come with an ageing population, we will be developing more SCCs across the island in the heartlands to make care more accessible to seniors. We plan to provide additional capacity to serve an additional 240 seniors, by the end of FY13. By FY20, we plan to develop approximately 60 new SCCs to serve an additional 5,500 seniors.

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