Debated in Parliament on 18 Sep 2023.
Ms Joan Pereira asked the Minister for Health in view of new nursing homes with at least 2,000 beds coming onstream in the next five years, what are the Ministry’s plans to facilitate the training and recruitment of manpower to ensure that good care and service standards are upheld.
The Ministry of Health (MOH) works with the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) to provide training programmes and training subsidies for the community care sector, including nursing homes. This includes the Community Care Traineeship Programme provided by the AIC Learning Network. There are also training subsidies for in-service staff and fresh entrants to pursue a range of clinical and non-clinical skills training through the Community Care Manpower Development Awards.
Since 2020, MOH and AIC have embarked on efforts to redesign support care job functions within the community care sector. This aims to equip our support care workforce, being the majority of the workforce in nursing homes, with a broad range of skills to enable them to deliver better and more holistic care, as well as provide opportunities for good performers to progress to managerial roles.
Additionally, AIC regularly partners the sector on job fairs and has rolled out various initiatives to enhance sector recruitment, such as publicity campaigns to elevate the sector, an online careers portal, as well as scholarships for students and mid-career jobseekers. It also conducts overseas recruitment of foreign nurses and support care staff to supplement the local core in the community care sector. Through the ongoing community care salary enhancement exercise, we have also boosted salaries for the sector in the last three years, including those of local and foreign nurses and support care staff. Most recently, we introduced a sign-on bonus for eligible fresh nursing graduates who join publicly-funded residential community care organisations within this year.
PAPERCUTS