Welfare boost: The finance chief proposes strengthening elderly care services to meet growing demand.

Financial Secretary John Tsang has proposed initiatives to enhance services for the elderly, the disabled, people with mental illness, domestic violence victims and the disadvantaged.

Delivering his Budget today, Mr Tsang said in the past decade recurrent expenditure on social welfare had grown by more than half. In 2010-11 the amount will be about $40 billion, accounting for 17% of recurrent government expenditure.

Elderly care

Noting one in four Hong Kong people will be aged 65 or more by 2036, Mr Tsang proposed strengthening elderly-care services to meet the growing demand by:

* raising recurrent funding by $160 million to provide more than 1,000 extra subsidised nursing home places, and allocating $5 million to launch a pilot scheme to provide residential care homes with visiting pharmacist services;

* earmarking $55 million under the Lotteries Fund to implement an elderly home care pilot scheme in Kowloon to provide more personalised home-care services for those who are waiting for nursing home places; and,

* increasing recurrent funding by $9 million to provide 115 additional subsidised day-care places, and providing an extra $4 million to extend the District-based Scheme on Carer Training to provide support to the elderly at home.

Rehabilitation services

Extra recurrent funding of $100 million will be provided to enhance services for the disabled, including $60 million for providing 268 extra subvented residential care places, 154 extra places for pre-school rehabilitation services and 260 extra places for day training and vocational rehabilitation services; and $40 million for enhancing support services like physiotherapy and nursing care for elderly residents in subvented residential care homes for people with intellectual disability.

About $8 million will be spent to increase the number of Rehabuses to 119 by acquiring four new vehicles and replacing six old ones.

The Government will regulate residential care homes for the disabled through a statutory licensing scheme. Before it is launched, complementary measures will be introduced to encourage operators of private residential care homes to improve their service quality, increase the provision of subsidised places, and facilitate the market to develop residential care homes of different types and modes of operation. About $64 million under the Lotteries Fund has been earmarked to implement a pilot Bought Place Scheme.

Mr Tsang has also earmarked $163 million under the fund to implement a pilot scheme in Kwun Tong and Tuen Mun to provide people with severe disabilities with home-based nursing care services, to strengthen community support to these people and relieve pressure on their family carers.

Mental illness patients

In the next financial year the Hospital Authority will launch new programmes for patients with severe mental illness and common mental disorders, involving spending of more than $100 million.

The measures include:

* piloting a case management programme in three districts to train healthcare workers as case managers to provide continuous and customised intensive support at the community level to people with severe mental illness. The number of patients benefiting from it will increase from 5,000 in 2010-11 to 16,000 in 2012-13; and,

* promoting collaboration between psychiatric specialist out-patient service and primary healthcare service to provide proper assessment and consultation services for patients with common mental disorders, which will benefit 7,000 patients in 2010-11, and up to 10,000 each year from 2011-12 onwards.

Mr Tsang also proposes to extend the service mode of the existing Integrated Community Centre for Mental Wellness in Tin Shui Wai to all 18 districts in Hong Kong with an extra recurrent funding of $70 million. Another $6 million will be provided to recruit 14 extra psychiatric medical social workers, thereby increasing their number to more than 210.

A new Victim Support Programme will be launched in the first half of this year to enhance support for victims of domestic violence. Another $200 million will be injected into the Partnership Fund for the Disadvantaged to encourage further cross-sector collaboration to help the disadvantaged.