MEETING THE GROWING NEEDS OF SENIORS
At Active Global Home and Community Care, for instance, new programmes are introduced to cater to the growing needs of seniors, besides the usual activities such as line dancing and board games.
“With the launch of Healthier SG, two additional services called the social connector to engage people socially and in the community, and the community screener, have been added to this suite of services that we offer,” said Active Global Home and Community Care’s community outreach manager Lakshmi KS, referring to the national initiative encouraging Singaporeans to take steps towards better health and quality of life.
These efforts by active ageing centres are heeding a call by the government to draw seniors out of their homes.
However, challenges remain in finding enough people to support operations.
Active Global Home and Community Care has put out recruitment calls for full-time staff since last year, but not many have come forward.
“Manpower has been a huge challenge for the community care organisations all the time. But this challenge is something that we have to learn to find creative ways to battle with,” said Ms Lakshmi.
“Apart from our full-time team, we do depend largely on our volunteers. This pool of volunteers, recruiting them and retaining them is a challenge for us.”