The government submitted a document to the Legislative Council a few days ago, explaining the proposed amendments to improve the quality of residential care homes for the elderly and people with disabilities. It plans to submit the amendment bill to the Legislative Council within this year. If passed, various amendments will be implemented in stages.
The seven recommendations cover different areas, including: raising the minimum manpower requirement, raising the minimum floor area per resident, enhancing accountability for home operators, introducing a registration system for home supervisors, improving the registration system for health workers, and optimizing the handling of drugs and regulations on the use of restraints and the protection of resident privacy, as well as increased penalties.
In the past, there have been cases of RCHEs violating ordinances, and even some RCHEs have been able to operate as usual even after an elder abuse scandal broke out. The SWD has never revoked any RCHE licenses over the years, and there was at most one case of refusal to renew the license. It can be seen that Current conditions are not deterrent enough.
The Residential Care Homes for the Elderly Ordinance, enacted in 1996 to ensure that residents of residential care homes for the elderly receive services that meet acceptable standards of physical, emotional and social benefit, has been No revisions have been made to keep pace with the times.
The government intends to take action now to respond to the demands of the society with amendments to the legislation, and to impose stricter supervision on the affairs of residential care homes, which is worthy of social support and will also have a positive effect on the development of the elderly care industry in the long run.
The elder abuse incident at the Cambridge Nursing Home has aroused public attention to the quality of the nursing home.
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In particular, it is clearly mentioned in the document that the minimum per capita floor area of residents in residential care homes for the elderly and the disabled should be increased from 6.5 square meters to 9.5 square meters for high care homes; Increasing to 8 square meters per capita will inevitably result in greater operating costs for the operation of the institution.
The government has the courage to make this decision, which reflects that the government takes the well-being of the users of residential care homes as the core of its governance.
Industry woes require the government to work harder
Considering that the current epidemic situation is severe, and only more than 30% of the elderly in residential care homes have been vaccinated, workers who wish to enter the industry may be deterred due to personal safety concerns. However, the proposal also mentions optimization measures for manpower, including increasing the number of nurses. and the duty time of the nursing staff, and the establishment of the registration system for residential care supervisors will further aggravate the existing manpower shortage problem in the industry. Therefore, the government needs to think about ways to deal with it.
The top priority is that the government must increase the vaccination rate of residential care homes for the elderly as soon as possible, on the one hand to protect social safety, and at the same time to help minimize the negative factors that will affect the entry of new people.
In the long run, the implementation of the policy should be carried out in stages. For the implementation of the policy affecting the manpower, the industry can be prepared first; The prepared safeguard plan is better to attract more people to join the industry.
Lack of social interaction and feeling lonely are problems faced by many "Friends".
What they need is not only "tiles to cover their heads", but also emotional communication and support.
(Photo by Gong Hui)
Simply tightening restrictions on existing residential care homes by means of amendments can provide limited effect, because the role that residential care homes can provide can only meet a part of the needs of elderly care services, and more and different measures must be used to cope with the population. The challenges posed by ageing, such as making home-based elderly services better, are issues that the government needs to put more effort into.
There is no "dramatic improvement" in elderly care services. Elderly services should not remain stagnant and home-based elderly care policies should also meet the non-material needs of the elderly. Common loopholes in social security. Comprehensive support and urgent care for the elderly.