A dedicated care worker is assigned to each person under new scheme
By Janice Tai, The Straits Times, 10 Oct 2012
AN ELDERLY person may not be comfortable having different people turn up each time to provide home-care services.
But a scheme which assigns a dedicated home-care worker to provide help - from basic nursing care to housekeeping to therapy - had a good response during a two-year trial.
The two service providers - Thye Hua Kwan (THK) Moral Charities and NTUC Eldercare - went on to soft-launch the Senior Home Care scheme last month.
Some 180 elderly people have signed up with THK Moral Charities while NTUC Eldercare said most of the 230 elderly folk who took part in the pilot are likely to continue.
The Government is committing an estimated $80 million to this service for the next five years. It is expected to benefit up to 4,000 elderly folk - more than twice the number of users of home-based care today - by 2016.
This is because many elderly people, who need different types of help from housekeeping to nursing, used to get such services from a host of care workers.
Madam Zainap Ihberim, 83, who is bed-bound, felt uncomfortable when different hospital nurses and volunteers came to clean her up and do simple exercises with her. "She didn't recognise them and was more guarded. Now that we have one care worker to help her with everything, she is more cooperative and doesn't grumble," said her daughter Azizah Jantan, 56, a housewife.
Madam Lim Yim Tee, 92, also felt frustrated when different home-care workers dropped by to help bathe her.
"Showering is quite intimate and she obviously felt more at ease when there was a familiar face," said her daughter Tay Chye Eng, 66, a housewife.
The scheme - open to those aged 55 and above - is more affordable than hiring maids or having home-nursing services.
Madam Zainap, for example, pays about $5 an hour for the service after means-tested subsidies are taken into account. Home-nursing fees can cost $80 or more an hour, excluding subsidies.
The care workers from the two service providers undergo additional training so that they can perform a range of tasks.
Those from NTUC Eldercare, for example, attend dementia-care training run by Changi General Hospital so that they can better engage seniors with the ailment. Among the things they learn is how to conduct mentally stimulating activities with the elderly.
Among the care workers is Ms Jenny Exconde. Even though she is a registered nurse in the Philippines with 10 years of experience working in hospitals and nursing homes, she had to attend a one-year ITE home-care course before she could be deployed under the scheme.
Said the 35-year-old: "I may be a trained nurse but I don't mind doing manual tasks like washing and hanging laundry or helping to restock medicine if it makes the elderly feel happier as this is a form of complete care."
The service providers said finding workers to run the scheme is a big challenge.
To work around this problem, THK Moral Charities will enrol local care workers in a soon-to-be-launched Workforce Skills Qualification accredited course so that those without a nursing background can join the sector.
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