212 Social Welfare
Services for the Elderly
The Government encourages and assists elderly people to lead active and healthy lives. It provides various community care and support services for them to continue living in their homes or familiar surroundings. For elderly persons who have long-term care needs but cannot be adequately taken care of at home, the Government provides subsidised residential care services.
The SWD continues to subsidise the Opportunities for the Elderly Project run by community organisations to make life more meaningful for elderly people. During the year, 277 programmes were subsidised by government grants amounting to $3 million.
Over the years, more than 1.3 million Senior Citizen Cards have been issued by the SWD to elderly persons in Hong Kong. With the cards, they may enjoy concessions, discounts and priority service provided by various companies, organisations and government departments.
Community Care and Support Services
At year-end, the Government was supporting 126 service teams (including integrated home care services teams, enhanced home and community care services teams, support teams for the elderly and a home help team) and 61 day care centres or units for the elderly to provide support services to elders who age at home. The Government has also launched new programmes in recent years to further support them and their carers, including the Integrated Discharge Support Programme for Elderly Patients, the Home Environment Improvement Scheme for the Elderly and a pilot scheme on home care services for frail elders as mentioned in 'Major Achievements' above.
The Government announced in the 2011-12 Policy Address that it would implement a four-year pilot scheme on community care service (CCS) voucher for the elderly starting from 2013-14 to further the policy objective of 'ageing in place' and promote the development of CCS. Under the scheme, Government subsidy would be provided directly to elderly people who have been assessed to be eligible for subsidised long-term care service, so that they could choose the suitable CCS.
In addition, the Government also supports 210 elderly centres (including district elderly community centres, neighbourhood elderly centres and social centres for the elderly) and a holiday centre for the elderly.
Residential Care Services
At year-end, there was a total of 26 126 subsidised residential care places in Hong Kong, including 1 882 self-care hostel places and home-for-the-aged places, 21 576 care-and-attention places (of which 7278 were purchased from private. residential care homes for the elderly (RCHES)), and 2 668 nursing home places (of which 139 were purchased from self-financing nursing homes).
The Government is committed to enhancing the quality of RCHES. The Residential Care Homes (Elderly Persons) Ordinance and its subsidiary legislation. empower the Director of Social Welfare to regulate these homes through a licensing