Care Where You Are

A sequel to the Foundation’s 2016 study on nursing homes, Care Where You Are flags the high costs of day-centre and home-care services, which can amount to $900-$2,200 per month, before subsidies. For the severely disabled at home, care can cost $3,100 per month, well above the median cost of care in a charity-run nursing home. Despite the importance of ageing at home, only 2.5 per cent of the Ministry of Health’s Budget – or $240 million – was spent on home and daycare services in FY 2016, the latest year for which figures are available. Significantly, long term care is expensive not just in Singapore, but in almost all advanced ageing nations. While acknowledging improvements in recent years – such as a rapid boost in capacity and innovative care models – the report recommends recalibrating healthcare budgets to increase public spending on community care, strengthening long term care insurance further and capping the fund-raising burden on non-profit care providers. It adds that Singapore needs to develop a more robust and transparent governance framework to oversee training and accreditation and openly audit on-the-job capabilities and the quality of care delivered to clients. Finally, the report underscores the need to catalyse informed public discussions on what kind of care system Singaporeans want and how much they are willing to pay for it.