Our Proposal For Improvement

As a way to improve the elderly situation in Singapore, we would like to propose the setting up of a restaurant at all the community centres available in Singapore.

These restaurants will provide nutritious and healthy food for the elderly. They will be able to come out with a suitable diet according to the body condition of the elderly. Different food menu will be prepared daily and the elderly can just make a phone call to inform the staff if they would like to dine- in. This will be beneficial for the elderly especially for those elderly whose daughters and sons are busy working in the daytime. They no longer need to worry about what to cook. Furthermore, these concept will also provide the opportunity for the elderly to interact with the others and be socially active. It beats sitting at the senior citizen corner whereby there will not be ready-made available food.

Besides providing food for the elderly, we will also provide free medical check-up. These will be carried out by volunteers from the medical field. They will go to every restaurant monthly to do thorough body check-up for the people who need it. This service will make the routine body check-up more convenient to the elderly. They no longer need to travel far to have their check-up.

We strongly believe that our proposal is feasible and manageable given sufficient resources and support from the relevant organisations as well as the government since we have always been seeking for solutions to improve the situation of the elderly.

Activities for the Elderly - Good Experience

Several local organisations have arranged/organised activities such as line dancing, morning taichi, petanque lesson, folk's dancing, qigong and etc. Some example of these organisations are:

Country Line Dance Association (Singapore) - http://www.cldas.com/

The Singapore Action Group of Elders - http://www.sage.org.sg/

Retired and Senior Volunteer Programme - http://www.rsvp.org.sg/

Lions Befrienders Service Association(Singapore)-http://www.lionsbefrienders.org.sg/

These activities aimed to keep the elderly socially active and ensure that they do not feel lonely.

Some Senior Citizen doing Taichi at East Coast

Social Dance at Chinatown

Most Toilets are not Elderly Friendly - bad experience

We observe that most of the toilets in Singapore is not user-friendly for the elderly. They should install handbars at both side of the wall so that it is better for the elderly to support themselves and a nonslip mat to prevent them from falling. If we can have a toilet for the disabled, we believe that we can also have a toilet specially meant for the elderly.

No Lift to every floor - bad experience

Certain HDB blocks still do not have lift access to every floor. This is especially hard for the elderly when they have to climb all the way up as they get tired easily.

NHG Polyclinics - bad experience

The National Healthcare Polyclinic provides a range of healthcare services for the elderly. Example of some of these services are:-
-Eye screening
-Day care
-Rehabilitation
-& etc

However other than the eye screening test, the rest of the services are only available at the selected NHG Polyclinics branches. This makes it difficult for the sick and frail elderly to travel to go for their checkup. Sometimes, they even have to wait in the queue for a very long time before they get to see the doctor. It is good if we could provide the elderly with a one stop centre near to their house to do their full body checkup.

http://www.nhgp.com.sg/

Sign boards on the public transportation - bad experience

The purpose of this board is to remind people to give up their seat to the elderly or disabled. Although this sign aimed to remind the passengers to be considerate towards the elderly or disabled by giving up their seats to them, our observations reveal the opposite. In fact, many tend to ignore this sign totally and some even pretended to be sleeping just to avoid giving up their seats.

Our observation further revealed that some of these signs have in fact been vandalised!

Nestle - Looking after the elderly - good experience

Nestle provides food that caters to the diet of the elderly. Since
nowadays, many of these elderly children is busy at work, it is better to keep a bottle of Nestle home. Elderly can gain nutrition easily.