Continuous Support under the Pandemic

We continued to provide necessary home care services for the elders to maintain daily living during the pandemic, such as nursing care, meal delivery, personal care, escort, and delivery of daily necessities. To facilitate effective rehabilitation, our occupational therapists, physiotherapists and speech therapists offered online tele-training for the frail elders and their carers. We highly appreciated the generous donation of protective materials from the corporates and organisations to support our service users. We have received additional governmental resources from the Social Welfare Department for the development of home-based services. The service capacity of Integrated Home Care Service (Frail Case) increased from 180 to 605 so as to serve more people in need.

Promote Holistic Wellbeing of the Elders in Multiple Dimensions

Kowloon City Centre for Active Ageing promotes holistic wellbeing of elders through six dimensions including physical, psychological, social, spiritual, cognitive and environmental aspects. The centres collaborated with community partners and mobilised community participation to promote a caring society at the core of family and elders’ wellbeing. To improve the wellbeing of elders in the "Jockey Club Community eHealth Care Project", we have also extensively utilised information technology during the pandemic to provide continuous support to the elders. With our emphasis on age-friendly and home safety, our Jockey Club Home Safety and Living Improvement Project improved elders’ living environment and safety awareness. We will continue to provide comprehensive support services to facilitate our elders to lead a healthy and happy life.

Active Support to Dementia Patients and Their Carers

The “Family-based Dementia Assessment & Support Project” was funded by The Community Chest of Hong Kong. In the previous year, the project has trained volunteers to do fast screenings and home-based cognitive trainings for elders. Dementia care planners conducted assessments for elders, provided Dementia care planning service for the caregivers, organised caregiver training groups and mutual support group. Regarding community education, our Project organised a design competition of cognitive training products, distributed cognitive training packs, produced comic books and organised talks to raise awareness of the youths and the public on Dementia.

Community Education to Raise Concern for Elders’ Depression

“Smiley Activation Project - Community / Home-Based Depression Treatment for the Elderly” aims to alleviate depressive mood of the elders and raise community concern on elders’ depression. Owing to the pandemic last year, the mode of some programmes was adjusted, such as home visit being replaced by phone counselling and online communication. Through the community education video clips produced under the Project, our  clinical psychologist and physiotherapist shared messages for prevention of depression and promotion of emotional health. We also published the booklet, 身心啟「晴」小錦囊 and the book 心寬解鬱 , aiming to raise public's concern on elders’ depression through the stories and photographs from the perspectives of the elders suffering from depressive mood.

Foster Self-improvement and Strengthen Social Connection under the Pandemic, and Promote Rehabilitation Using Gerontechnology

Our service users had to stay at home during the pandemic. We flexibly provided tele-rehabilitation through mobile devices to encourage service users to maintain home-based training. To help the frail elders maintain social connection, we actively liaised with community partners to organise activities, including dumplings cooking with western culinary trainees, Montessori groups by occupational therapist and other programmes by tertiary students.

Funded by the Innovation and Technology Fund for Application in Elderly and Rehabilitation Care, the centre could monitor the health condition of service users more effectively through acquiring smart vital sign recording and information management system. The two newly procured smart training systems could facilitate effective rehabilitation of service users suffering from stroke, weak muscle and Dementia through tailor-made training programmes.