By opening these facilities, the VWO hopes to address the growing demand for eldercare in light of a rise in the number of seniors living alone.

 

In the last six months, voluntary welfare organisation All Saints Home has opened two eldercare and nursing homes. In March, it opened its Yishun home and it has seen a tenfold increase in its number of patients and is now running at almost full capacity.

All Saints Home’s CEO, Dr Eugene Yeo, said, “The opening of our Yishun home marks the next step in our efforts to scale up our capabilities to help meet Singapore’s growing need for quality and affordable eldercare.” According to Dr Yeo, the home is located within the Chong Pang estate where 20 percent of its 50,000 residents are aged above 65. As such the home can “offer these residents access to the highest quality of care and contribute towards the creation of an active elderly community within the neighbourhood”.

He added: “Moving forward, we will also be stepping up our day care service in Yishun with the ultimate aim of providing home care, in order to better meet the different needs of Chong Pang residents.”

 

Value-added services

Beyond providing clinical care to the residents, the Yishun home also offers a variety of complementary services that improve the lives of residents, including music and art therapy, pet therapy, and table tennis therapy for more active residents.

All Saints Home at Yishun has also embarked on a range of community initiatives. In October this year, the home launched its “Share-a-Pot” programme, which invites seniors living in Chong Pang to its grounds on a weekly basis to enjoy a bowl of nutritious soup, participate in light exercises and mingle with its residents. This initiative has since grown steadily in popularity among the communities in the estate.

 

Second home to meet demands

The second home in Jurong East has started operations in September this year. With these two homes, All Saints Home has increased its capacity from 357 beds at its two other homes in Tampines and Hougang to over 700 beds. Both new homes were built under the Ministry of Health’s Build-Own-Lease (BOL) model, whereby the Ministry builds and owns the nursing homes and tenders out the operating rights.

These facilities will help meet Singapore’s growing demand for eldercare as the number of seniors living alone in Singapore is expected to rise to 83,000 by 2030 from 28,000 in 2010, with approximately 113,000 seniors needing some form of care. All Saints Home’s Jurong East has a dedicated dementia ward and this will meet the increasing demand for dementia care services given that the prevalence of the disease in Singapore is expected to more than quadruple from 40,000 in 2015 to 187,000 by 2020.

 

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