Sunday, June 20, 2010

Holiday work - Part 1: Understanding the ‘The Elderly Challenge’

Four key recommendation of the report:

1) Provide a Elderly friendly residence for the elders such as having different housing choices like the size, types, cost and where is it situated so as to offer the elderly people with more option to choose from to meet the needs of their requirement.

2) Have a barrier free community.Examples are providing the elderly people with an environment that will not impede them from traveling or access to some places. This will facilitate the elderly people and thus making their life easier. Making buses more accessible for the elderly by having no steps for wheelchairs and a low floor is also an example. This will not only benefit the seniors, but young parents, children in prams and people with physical disability.

3)Having more affordable healthcare and elderly care services.Top up the Medisave accounts of those who are not well-to-do when there are budget surplus, which means whenever the government have left over from the expenditure of the country development, it will go into the Medisave accounts and this will defray the cost of the healthcare costs.Family physicians also should take care of the elderly people more and look into their matters comprehensively.

4) Active lifestyles and well-being.Promote more programmes and services for the seniors so as to have them significantly contribute to Singapore, their family and the society.Build on family ties to ensure that the elderly people still have their family members as their front line of support.

One way the CAI report recommending to make our public housing more elderly-friendly
It says that HDB should work with market players to offer reverse mortgage schemes for elderly HDB flat lessees at commercial terms, to provide another option for seniors to derive some income from their homes to meet expenditure in old age, without having to move out of their homes.

TWO ways on how we can ensure that the quality of elderly care here in Singapore is affordable
1) The clinics can help them by providing subsidized fees for their services.
2) Give those elder people who do not have a income source a monthly allowance .

THREE things that I can do, as an SST student, to help overcome these elderly challenges
1) I can organize a fund-raising event to raise money for the Elderly.
2) I can design a machine which can allow the elderly person to walk or move across any surface.
3) I can assist a few elderly people with their needs.

No comments: