Holiday work - Part 1: Understanding the ‘The Elderly Challenge’

1. The four key recommendations of the report are elder-friendly housing, barrier-free society, holistic affordable healthcare and eldercare, and active lifestyles and wellbeing.
2. One of the ways is to work with market players to offer reverse mortgage schemes for the elderly HDB flat lessees at commercial terms.
3. One way is to top up Medisave accounts of less well-off Singaporeans when there are budget surpluses. Another way is that family physicians should play an important role in the management of healthcare needs for seniors.
4. As a SST student, I can create elder-friendly products for them, suggest solutions to the government to improve the elderly's  lives, and do service learning to help the elderly.

Preston

Elderly Challenge - Observation 1

  Today I observed two elderly men walking out of a SBS bus at a bus stop. They were holding to their umbrellas as their support. They were the last to walk out of the bus as they took a long time to walk out. They were slow in their movements and seem very unbalanced even with the umbrellas. It took about 10 seconds for each one of them to take a step down the 'stairs'. They even held onto each other for more support when one of the elderly man almost fell down. When they got out of the bus, they walked slowly to bus stop. (I did not manage to interview them)
  I feel sorry for those two elderly men as they took a long time just to walk out of the bus. If this was the case, guess how long it would take for them to cross the road. we need to think of how we can improve their lives better and to save their time.

Preston