REMARKS BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICIES, AT DOORSTOP INTERVIEW ON AGE WELL NEIGHBOURHOODS

1.           Age Well Neighbourhoods represents our next level ambition for our healthcare system. It will be a significant, major, multi-year project that will spread throughout Singapore.

2.           Let me give a bit of background how this came about. For the longest time, as the Singapore population ages, there was more demand for nursing homes, and these are families where seniors are maybe a bit frail, sick, needing daily assistance, and the family might not be of high income.

3.           So, we have been building more nursing homes. When I joined the Ministry of Health (MOH) in 2021, we had 16,000 nursing home beds. Today, we have over 20,000. By 2030 we expect 31,000 and it's increasing quite rapidly. Families need that and we will continue to build them.

4.           But when you think about it, is not a sustainable long-term solution for ageing. Our land is limited in building the nursing homes. We're not like big countries where there's space to build big retirement villages. But more importantly, rather than focusing on building more nursing homes, our focus should be on how do we help seniors age gracefully and healthily, so that they continue to be connected with the community living amongst the young and even children.

5.           That must be our long-term solution. We have tried building Community Care Apartments (CCAs) for that purpose. But again, how many can we build? We won't move the needle, and we will have 1 million seniors in time to come, and maybe more.

6.           So therefore, our long-term solution is to let the seniors age in place in the neighbourhoods that they are living in; the neighbourhood that they are comfortable with, surrounded by friends, community activities and with healthcare support. That is a long-term solution, and that, I think is the core idea behind Age Well Neighbourhoods.

7.           Age Well Neighbourhoods is many years in the making. Just like Rome was not built in one day. It took many, many years of hard work and foundations laid before we can think about the concept of the approach.

8.            MOH has always focused on preventive care and population health. After Covid, the shift became a lot more decisive because of the experience of Covid. So, we are now very determined to shift the centre of gravity of care away from hospitals and clinics into the community and to residential homes.

9.           First step to do so was the Healthier SG strategy, where we mobilise our General Practitioners (GPs) to deliver preventive care for population health. But the next step we took, equally important in strategy, was Age Well SG, and today we are launching the roadshow for this year. Age Well SG is about fighting loneliness. A network of Active Ageing Centres (AACs) throughout Singapore, organising local activities, complemented by all the free exercise groups that the Health Promotion Board (HPB) organises and together, we encourage seniors, don't be lonely, don't get isolated, step out your homes, connect with the community, participate in activities.

10.        So, we have been thinking about how to take Age Well SG to the next step. And I, earlier this year, talked about several things, significant things that we are doing.

11.        Number one is the network of AACs is expanding, but more importantly, we are projecting their activities deeper into the community. So we are using, for example, the People’s Association’s Residents' Networks centres. We are using the Housing & Development Board’s pavilions and common spaces. We are even projecting the activities into private estates, using parks within private estates. That way, the activities of AACs become a lot more accessible.

12.        Second, a very significant initiative are the Community Health Posts (CHP). These are run by our public hospitals and manned by community care personnel. Nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, they form these teams deployed to the community, typically once a week, and their initial purpose is to provide continual care for patients that are discharged from hospital, but I think we can do a lot more.

13.        Community care teams in the CHPs, they can also help, besides helping patients recover, they can help them manage their chronic illness. They can work with the Healthier SG GPs to deliver more effective preventative care to the community, they can help rehab patients strengthen their physical fitness, a range of things that we are currently developing.

14.        Number three is HPC, Home Personal Care. There are always seniors living in the community that need some daily assistance with their daily activities. So Home Personal Care has been rolled out some time ago. Today, there are 6,000 families that benefit them. Recently, we raised the subsidy level and support level for long term care, including Home Personal Care, so the increase in budget is about $2 billion from now to 2030.

15.        So, for eligible families that are using HPC today, they will have already seen one round of fee reduction in 2025. Next year, they will see another round of fee reduction. Therefore, more families will benefit from this.

16.        But one more idea that we are now conceptualising is for areas where there is a higher density of seniors. Let's have a HPC permanent post where the team is sited here. That way, because they are sited in the community, after office hours, they can still provide some help. In an emergency, they can be the first responder. That way, I think we'll relieve the burden of caregivers.

17.        And lastly, the Ministry of National Development and Ministry of Transport will continue to develop and improve the physical environment through Friendly Streets and programmes like EASE and silver generation upgrading to make the physical environment a lot more conducive for senior citizens.

18.        So, there are four major things, the AACs, the CHPs, HPCs and the physical environment upgrading. But instead of spreading all these initiatives thinly around the island, we feel it is more effective and will make a bigger impact if we combine them, consolidate and harmonise them, integrate them, and then implement them in a consolidated way, in communities with a high density of seniors.

19.        And if we can do so, we transform that community into an Age Well Neighbourhood, and that is really the plan. We have selected Toa Payoh as a start, but we will be selecting a couple more others. When the details are ready, we will announce them.