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Social workers in Family Service Centres have been instructed to check the needs of their elderly clients; Social Security Field Units have also been checking up on their single elderly Comprehensive Social Security Assistance recipients.
SWD's district staff have been contacting non-governmental organisations running local multi-service centres for the elderly and home help teams to check up on any elderly clients who might be particularly vulnerable.
The home help teams which have worked throughout the holiday period making 670 visits to clients needing their services have been a particularly useful outreaching service.
"But there are more than 80,000 elderly persons living alone in Hong Kong. There is a limitation to what the Government can do in providing personal care to each of them," said the spokesman.
The Government must take the lead in meeting the needs of those most vulnerable in the community but it could not possibly hope to fulfil a role more properly met by basic neighbourliness and family values, he said.
The spokesman added that the Government had placed a very high priority on improving services for the elderly.
"This year we will have spent $9 billion on health, welfare and social security services for them - a 50 per cent increase in real terms over three years," he said.
But for elderly living alone the main answer was old-fashioned community spirit, the spokesman added.
The Secretary for Health and Welfare is drawing up plans with the Directors of Home Affairs and Social Welfare to further promote the need for everyone to show more care for the elderly in the community.
No matter how much resources were devoted to services for the elderly, in the final analysis, the Government could not replace the family in providing support for elderly persons living at home, said the spokesman.
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