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Following is a written reply by the Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, to a question by the Hon Leung Kwok-hung in the Legislative Council today (June 24):
Question:
From its implementation in November 2000 until February 28, 2009, the Standardised Care Need Assessment Mechanism for Elderly Services had completed assessment for 134,770 cases. In this connection, will the Government set out in the table at annex the number of cases for which assessment was completed in each financial year, broken down by the District Council district in which the elderly people concerned resided and the disease(s) which they were suffering from as revealed by the assessment results?
Reply:
President,
My reply to the Hon Leung Kwok-hung's question is as follows:
Since November 2000, the Social Welfare Department (SWD) has implemented the Standardised Care Need Assessment Mechanism for Elderly Services (the Mechanism) to assess the long-term care needs of elders. Under the Mechanism, accredited assessors will assess the care needs of elders with an internationally recognised assessment tool named "Minimum Data Set-Home Care" (MDS-HC) and match appropriate long-term care services for the elders. Assessors will conduct comprehensive assessments on the applicants' abilities in activities of daily living, physical functioning, memory, communication skills, behaviour and emotion, health conditions, living environment and coping capabilities etc., in order to ascertain their long-term care needs and recommend suitable services.
In our reply to the Hon Leung Kwok-hung's written question on June, 17, we have set out the number of assessment cases completed in each financial year from November 2000 to February 2009. Figures provided in the relevant reply are as follows:
No. of assessment cases
Year completed within the year
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2000/01
(November 2000–
March 2001) 2,408
2001/02 12,126
2002/03 12,997
2003/04 12,162
2004/05 17,691
2005/06 19,033
2006/07 18,980
2007/08 20,585
2008/09
(April 2008 -
February 2009) 18,788
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Total: 134,770
The various diseases mentioned in the question constitute part of MDS-HC. They are for understanding the health conditions of the elders, so that the concerned staff can refer to such conditions when formulating individual care plans for the elders. As mentioned above, when conducting assessment for each applicant, the assessor will consider various aspects of the elder's condition before recommending appropriate services. SWD has not compiled statistics for individual diseases mentioned in the question.
Ends/Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Issued at HKT 11:49
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