Fulfilling a Golden Dream

It takes more than guts and perseverance to fight for something for decades. It might require a measure of something like sagacity, which is not a word that gets used very often. It certainly also takes insight to recognise a problem long before it becomes widely discussed, and sheer initiative to get started on solutions.

Earlier this year, assisted living for seniors in Singapore made the news with fresh measures announced in Parliament. “Assisted Living” enables seniors to continue to live in the community, but with some help, so that they need not go prematurely into nursing homes. This announcement might have been unsurprising to some, especially those who followed the news that specific recommendations had been made in January last year. What might be revelatory is that this development has been more than 20 years in the making — and more interestingly, it was NUS senior alumni who got the ball rolling.

In 2009, Dr Rosemary Khoo (Arts and Social Sciences ’65) established her monthly Tea & Chat sessions for senior alumni in the (then) newly-built Shaw Foundation Alumni House. This would later evolve into the NUS Senior Alumni in 2011, with Dr Khoo as its founding President (a position she held until recently). Among the attendees in the early Tea & Chat days was Dr Chiang Hai Ding (Arts and Social Sciences ’59), who happened to have been advocating for senior citizen housing solutions since at least 1997. They joined Dr Philbert Chin (Medicine ’59), Founding President of RSVP Singapore (The Organisation of Senior Volunteers), and gathered 20 peers who came forward to help produce a report on the matter of senior housing in the public sector. In 2010, this report was presented to then-Minister Mr Lim Boon Heng (who had spoken on “Housing Senior Singaporeans” at a public forum held at NUS in 1997) as well as the Housing and Development Board (HDB). It did not produce any immediate results, but the proposals seemed eventually to form the basis for a new type of senior housing, called “assisted living”, in Bukit Batok. The pilot project was announced in 2019, and was scheduled to launch in May 2020, only to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to published reports this year in Singapore’s dailies, this facility is the sort of “vertical kampong” first advocated by RSVP in 2010, and then re-presented by the Senior Alumni in May 2013 — when Dr Khoo chaired the Senior Alumni’s “Our Singapore Conversation” with its Chairman and now-Deputy Prime Minister Mr Heng Swee Keat, that was held at Eusoff Hall. Dr Khoo and Dr Chiang tell The AlumNUS that the four pillars that the Senior Alumni advocated for were healthcare, housing, lifelong learning, and volunteering. Presenting the idea of “senior housing” were architect Andrew Tan, Dr Chin, and Dr Chiang.

The High Life

The vertical kampong concept works with all four of those ideas, allowing a shared residential space and the chance for seniors to build a community. The original RSVP proposal from 2010 envisioned a “housing plus care” lifestyle, with HDB taking care of the housing and the Ministry of Health providing the attendant care package. Reading from the announcement of assisted living flats, Dr Chiang notes, “‘The 160 Assisted-Living flats in Bukit Batok...will come with a mandatory package of services, including 24/7 emergency response, and an on-site community manager to facilitate social interaction and referral to care services.’ In other words, ‘housing plus care’ for seniors — not very dissimilar to the RSVP proposal that NUS Senior Alumni supported!” 

Dr Khoo and Dr Chiang are quick to point out that many other stakeholders also made their contributions in the area of eldercare, including senior housing. In the 10 years that have passed since the original RSVP proposal, the Pioneer Generation Package (2013) and the Merdeka Generation Package (2019) were introduced. On the housing front, HDB launched Kampong Admiralty (2017), with 100 units designated for seniors. These are served by a range of social, healthcare and community services, along with an active-ageing hub. 

The private sector followed suit in 2018 with the Saint Bernadette Lifestyle Village, an assisted-living facility run by the husband-and-wife team of Dr Joseph Lee and Dr Belinda Wee. When Dr Wee launched the Assisted Living Facilities Association (ALFA) Good Practice Guide, Dr Chiang spoke in support and the NUS Senior Alumni Committee attended.  It should be noted that the Henderson Home in Bukit Merah has been operating as a home for seniors since the 1970s; it is more of an assisted living-style facility than a nursing home, according to press reports. It is managed by NTUC Health, and Dr Chiang is a member of the Home’s Advisory Council. 

Playing an active role in advocating for senior housing since its launch in 2013 is the PAP Seniors Group (PAP.SG), which is helmed by Speaker of Parliament, Mr Tan Chuan-Jin (Public Policy ’08). It submitted to Government a proposal titled Empowering Us to Live with Purpose and Dignity in Our Senior Years
in early 2019 that made the case for healthcare, lifelong learning, and housing for elders, among other key points. Dr Chiang, a former Member-of-Parliament for Ulu Pandan, is a member of the Group, which also consulted widely with stakeholders when preparing its proposal. 

A Labour of Love

Both Dr Khoo and Dr Chiang are modest about their contributions in this process, noting that they and other seniors simply want to make the most of their golden years. Dr Khoo says that this was why the topics discussed during the Senior Alumni’s 2013 “Our Singapore Conversation” session included volunteering – senior citizens want to do meaningful work as long as they are able. “We can also be useful,” remarks Dr Khoo. This echoes the sentiments of the PAP.SG in its 2019 proposal, with the executive summary noting that senior citizens could continue to learn new things and contribute meaningfully, if they so wished.     

Dr Khoo and Dr Chiang note that their own efforts, and the various proposals they have been a part of, will likely benefit generations beyond their own. After all, the 2019 proposal is called Empowering Us to Live with Purpose and Dignity in Our Senior Years — it does not put any limit on who the ‘Us’ in the title refers to. 

   
Text by Ashok Soman