Plans and Targets to Expand Day and Home Care Capacity to Promote Ageing-in-place

87 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Health (a) what are the plans and targets to expand day care and home care capacity to promote ageing-in-place in the community; and (b) what are the plans to mainstream the new varieties of care pilot programmes such as night respite care for dementia patients.

Mr Ong Ye Kung: Since 2015, MOH has added 4,600 day care places and 3,100 home care places to ensure that we have sufficient capacity of home and day care services to support ageing in place in the community.

Beyond capacity, we also focus on enhancing the quality and coverage of our community-based services to support ageing in place. For example, we had rolled out the Eldercare Centre (EC) service model since May 2021. This provides seniors with convenient access to a common suite of active ageing programmes, befriending as well as information and referral services in the community. We will on-board more than 200 centres onto this model by 2024.

MOH develops new community initiatives through pilots to broaden the range of options for our seniors and their caregivers. MOH reviews various factors, such as the programme’s cost effectiveness in meeting seniors’ care needs and its scalability, before deciding whether to mainstream a pilot. The pilot on night respite care for dementia patients has been extended as it was suspended for a period of time due to the COVID-19 pandemic.