Efforts to Ramp up Manpower for Eldercare Facilities

Based on estimates by MSF and MOH, we will need about 1,200 Senior Care Associates and 300 Social Service Professionals in community-based eldercare by 2015, and another 350 nurses and 1,300 support care staff in new nursing homes.

MSF is working with the Centre for Enabled Living, National Council for Social Service and VWOs to recruit and train Senior Care Associates and Social Service Professionals. Senior Care Associates are needed for Senior Care Centres and Senior Home Care. The former offer day care, general nursing, physiotherapy and dementia care, while the latter offer personal care and health support services delivered to the elderly at their homes. They will receive training under the Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ) framework. As they will be higher skilled than today's eldercare workers, they can expect to earn higher salaries.

The next group of workers is Social Service Professionals, comprising largely Social Work Associates and Social Service Assistants to be deployed at Senior Activity Centres (SACs). Most of them are expected to have Diplomas and Higher Diplomas in Social Service provided by the Social Service Training Institute and funded by MSF.

To ramp up the healthcare professional staff needed for the sector, MOH intends to expand the annual intakes for nursing and encourage more mid-career conversions to nursing and allied health. MOH will also support continuing and advanced skills training and upgrading for staff in the intermediate and long-term care sector. MOH and MSF will resource the sector to ensure salaries are competitive.

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To meet the manpower demand for the planned 105 facilities over the next four years, as well as beyond 2015, we will have to look beyond increasing manpower supply to also work with eldercare service providers to raise productivity, through initiatives, such as bulk procurement, process redesign and use of technology. In facilities such as SACs, we will also explore reducing the demand for full-time workers by encouraging retirees and homemakers to work part-time as Home Visit Assistants.

Overall, the number of eldercare facilities which we will be developing should provide sufficient capacity to cater to the increase in the elderly population beyond 2015. MSF will continue to monitor demand and utilisation of the various services, as well as other emerging needs. These will then be further reviewed and addressed under the Ministerial Committee on Ageing.

I have two supplementary questions. I would like to ask the Minister of State what other measures would the Ministry look at to attract more locals to work as Senior Care Associates. The Minister of State just now briefly mentioned about involving retirees and women who wish to return to the workforce. I feel that many of them are natural care-givers but they require training. Could the Minister of State elaborate on this? Secondly, I understand that MSF has also been developing Senior Group Homes. I would like to ask the Minister of State if she could give me an update on the progress of the Senior Group Homes scheme.

I want to thank the Member for asking the questions. On the first question, we intend to do three things. We intend to enlarge the scope of work of the Senior Care Associates, through skills upgrading, so that they can do a lot more work after the skills upgrading training through the WSQ.

Secondly, we intend to deploy the use of more assisted technology, for instance, the use of hoist in moving seniors from the bed to the chair and so on. That also reduces the tedium and the menial part of the work associated with taking care of the elderly.

The third part, as the Member has raised, is a question of how we deploy other resources we have in the community, for instance, back-to-work women, of housewives as well as retirees. What we intend to do and are looking at is how to break up the work that is being done at the Senior Care Centres, as well as in the Senior Activity Centres, to see whether we could then deploy, make use of housewives and retirees in this work, instead of just looking for full-time workers.

On the second question about group homes: group homes basically aim to provide assisted living to encourage our seniors to stay independent and to support their integration into society. We have already opened one at Pipit Road in February this year. We intend to open another – it is on track – in December this year or early next year, 2013. We are also working with MND to identify sites to have more group homes, and also to put the Senior Group Homes as part of the planning parameters for MND when they are planning for development in areas. We have received very good feedback about the Senior Group Homes.

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Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to ask the Ministry, of the 105 eldercare facilities, whether a pilot could be organised to have eldercare and childcare facilities within the same location for two reasons. First, the children who are taken care of by their grandparents will see that their grandparents also have needs. And, secondly, for the working parents who leave their children with the grandparents, then, the grandparents can be in the same geography as the grandchildren to take care of them.

Thank you. I think that is certainly a very good idea and that is what we want to do and wish to do, to have the integration of the facilities. As the Member said, it is to encourage inter-generational bonding and support. In fact, we have already started one in Mr Seah Kian Peng's constituency. It will be an integrated facility, but that is because we have the premises. The opportunities are, therefore, for us to site the two facilities together. But we will certainly take into account Mr Christopher de Souza's views and we will proactively look at ways to site both the facilities together in order to support each other.

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