Ms Priscylla Shaw, President Home Nursing Foundation,
Dr Yim Sau Kit, CEO Home Nursing Foundation,
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Good morning. I am delighted to be here today to formalise our collaboration with the Home Nursing Foundation by the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
As illustrated in the role-play (just now), with this collaboration, NTUC Eldercare and the Home Nursing Foundation will be able to provide seniors with both social and nursing home-based care services in a more holistic and client-centred approach.
The Need To Do More…
Mdm Mak Khuan Chong, 56yrs, is a client of our Care@home service. She stays with her husband in a 3-room flat in Aljunied. Due to her stroke and diabetes, she is wheelchair-bound and requires assistance in her daily living activities, such as transferring from the bed to wheelchair, showering and physio-rehabilitation exercises. Our iCare Officer, Ms Sarah Ng, visits her three times a week at her home to provide this assistance.
The couple was coping well, supported by the home-help services rendered by NTUC Eldercare. Unfortunately, her husband, Mr Lim You Ping, 62 years old, had a relapse of his cancer recently. In addition to caring for his wife, he has to visit the National Cancer Centre for his chemotherapy. In days when his pain was unbearable, he had to be placed on morphine to manage the pain.
The family will need some level of home medical support but NTUC Eldercare did not have the home nursing expertise. We know that it is not possible to deliver either high quality or efficient services if the client and, in this case the elderly couple, is being passed like a parcel from one part of the system to another. And so, we don’t. Some of you may wonder what I mean. In Singapore we have many organisations providing services, with each organisation specialising in a particular aspect of service. However, the client usually needs multiple services. The client has to seek help from each of these, and often, the client does not know how to navigate the system. Services providers do try to help, and pass on to another organisation they know. It is not a system friendly to those in need of services. NTUC Eldercare tries to adopt a client-centric approach, and assist the client as best it can. So we try to develop the capability to provide “en suite” services.
We will need to find community partners to collaborate so that we can continue to support the multiple care needs of this elderly couple.
There is a need to develop services to cater to the growing demands for services to the elderly. Thus, we are delighted that Home Nursing Foundation is setting up satellite centres, so that their nurses will be able to serve the seniors in the community more closely.
Doing More, Together
This collaboration is significant as such integration complements rather than disrupt each other and makes a difference to the lives of many other seniors like Mdm Mak & Mr Lim.(Mdm Mak is here today).
It is a practical and cost-effective way to put together en suite services for our growing population of elderly residents. As we combine our strengths, we can produce an even more vibrant community sector that grows from strength to strength. This inter-dependence will not only draw our community closer but also enable us to do more good together more efficiently and effectively.
Together, we can enable more seniors and their family members to lead happy, meaningful and dignified lives.
