Mayor Chu diligently promotes locally public senior care
On 1/6/2014, New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu announced that the City Government would implement three new welfare measures for seniors when he visited elders at Guang’en Senior Care Center and Yonghe Senior Day Care Center. Those measures included setting up more senior clubs, Senior Day Care Centers and mobile homestay care locations, and these all together would make seniors in New Taipei City be taken care locally and live healthily.
Eric Chu indicated that New Taipei City would set up 200 senior clubs by the end of this year, and the idea of a senior club originated from seniors eating together movement. Healthy seniors could learn happily and eat together with other seniors to enrich their lives at a senior club. Moreover, the City Government would spend about NT$40 million to set up 10 day care centers additionally. The total number of day care centers would be 17 ones by the end of this year all over New Taipei City, and more elders having dementia and disability could be effectively served, so the community care service could become more complete.
Chu said that in addition to setting up more senior clubs and day care centers, New Taipei City led the whole nation to promote mobile homestay care service. There was already one location running at Xinzhuang District, and now another one would be opened at Xindian District.
Mayor Chu gave seniors apples and red envelopes valued at NT$10000 each for Chinese New Year when he visited seniors. He also took exercises, wrote Chinese New Year couplets, span tops and threw sandbags with them. Everyone was full of happiness. The Mayor finally went to visit the senior club at Minquan community care location, and he kindly took pictures with elders attending the eating together event and with students learning rhythm dance.
The Social Welfare Department indicated that the number of seniors with an age of 65 or above was already more than 370,000 people. The phenomenon of an aging population could not be ignored. Treating taking care of elders locally as a goal, the City Government expanded its public senior care service. In addition to setting up more senior clubs and day care centers, it launched mobile homestay care service managed by various agents. The agents were responsible for training caregivers, matching and assigning caregivers to families needing help. Currently, this service was pilot at Xinzhuang District in Hondao Senior Citizen’s Welfare Foundation and at Xindian District in Guang’en Senior Care Center. In the future more professional organizations would be involved in, and this service would be expanded to cover the whole city to help more families. The Social Welfare Department said that despite the previous mentioned service, the department started to promote New Taipei City senior care and savings project in the October of 2013, which encouraged civilians to become volunteers in serving elders. Until now, the project was very successful since more than 1000 people became volunteers.