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The Secretary for Labour and Welfare, Mr Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, visited a nursing home cum day care centre in Shek Yam Estate, Kwai Chung, this afternoon (February 14) to extend his warmest wishes to the elderly at the beginning of the Year of the Snake.
Accompanied by the District Social Welfare Officer (Tsuen Wan/Kwai Tsing), Mr Lam Ding-fung, Mr Cheung arrived at the Evergreen Nursing Home cum Day Care Centre and was briefed on the services provided to the elderly before touring the facilities.
The nursing home, a contract home run by a private operator, provides 145 residential care places, 20 day care places and three day respite care places.
Mr Cheung said, "The Social Welfare Department (SWD) contracts out residential care services through open tender. This provides a level playing field so that non-governmental organisations and private operators will have equal opportunities to run purpose-built residential care homes for the elderly funded by the Government."
Mr Cheung warmly chatted with and presented mandarins to the senior citizens to wish them good health and fortune while he toured around.
Mr Cheung said, "The Government will continue to promote 'ageing in place as the core, institutional care as backup' and enhance the subsidised community and residential care services for the elderly."
Mr Cheung cited the day respite service for the elderly as an example. He said, "The service provides support and temporary relief for family members or relatives who are the main caregivers of elderly people requiring a certain degree of personal care while residing in the community. It aims at encouraging and helping the elderly to continue living in the community for as long as possible.
"In addition, the SWD will launch the First Phase of the Pilot Scheme on Community Care Service Voucher for the Elderly in September this year, issuing a maximum of 1 200 vouchers in eight designated districts. The Scheme adopts an innovative funding mode of 'money follows the user' and enables more flexible choice of community care services by the elderly. This also helps to attract more service providers and thus be conducive to the development of a silver hair market in Hong Kong.
"This would not lessen our commitment in conventional community care services. Instead, we will increase day care places in the conventional funding mode and extend the service hours of new day care centres for the elderly.
"Apart from community care, residential care is also a key element of the elderly care services. Noting the demand for residential care places of the frail ones, we will increase the number of subsidised residential care places for the elderly through a multi-pronged approach ranging from short- to long-term, including earmarking 11 development projects for construction of new contract residential care homes for the elderly."
Ends/Thursday, February 14, 2013
Issued at HKT 16:08
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