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The Director of Social Welfare, Mr Patrick Nip, today (July 21) visited a service user of the Pilot Scheme on Home Care Service for Persons with Severe Disabilities. He said he believed that the Social Welfare Department (SWD) has been on the right track to develop the one-stop service for persons with severe disabilities and their carers while they wait for subvented residential care services.
During his visit to Mrs Wong and her daughter, Ah Yan, at Shun Tin Estate in Kwun Tong this afternoon, Mr Nip listened attentively to them discussing their use of the home care service.
Ah Yan, a person with intellectual disabilities, had all along been receiving service at a local day activity centre while waiting for residential care services for persons with severe disabilities. Upon the implementation of the Scheme in March 2011, the family was referred by their social worker to the Christian Family Service Centre and started receiving the home care service.
According to Mrs Wong, Ah Yan now receives a package of professional home care services, ranging from personal care, including bathing, by care workers to rehabilitation training by occupational therapists and physiotherapists, as well as health checks by nurses. To relieve Mrs Wong's stress as the carer of Ah Yan, social workers have provided her with counselling services and training on some basic skills in handling persons with severe disabilities. In addition, residential respite service would also be arranged for Ah Yan as necessary.
Mr Nip was pleased to note that Mrs Wong and Ah Yan have been provided with better support through the new initiative. "The case management model adopted for the Scheme has enabled service providers to assess from a multi-disciplinary perspective the unique needs and progress of individual service users and to map out a tailor-made and personalised plan for its professional staff to work in partnership and deliver comprehensive home care service to the service users," he said.
"To date, over 100 persons with severe disabilities have been referred to participate in the Scheme. We will continue to monitor the operation of the Scheme and conduct a mid-term review for further improvement and refinement of the implementation details as appropriate."
A total of $163 million has been earmarked under the three-year Scheme for two service providers, the Christian Family Service Centre and the Neighbourhood Advice-Action Council, to deliver home care service in Kwun Tong and Tuen Mun respectively, the two districts with the largest number of persons with severe disabilities waiting for subvented residential care services. It is expected that some 540 service users will benefit from the pilot service eventually.
As regards residential service, the Government has been continuously increasing the provision of subvented residential places in recent years. In 2010-11 and 2011-12, the Government will provide 1 046 additional residential care places. In addition, the Government has already earmarked 10 sites in future development projects for the construction of new residential care homes for persons with disabilities (RCHDs) and over 1 000 residential places will be added.
At the end of last year, the SWD for the first time invited private RCHDs to join a pilot Bought Place Scheme, under which the SWD will purchase 300 places in phases. Upon the completion of the vetting exercise, the SWD has purchased 60 places from two private RCHDs so far and will continue to purchase the remaining places.
Ends/Thursday, July 21, 2011
Issued at HKT 18:11
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