An evaluation of the Senior Citizen Residence scheme (SEN) : the effectiveness of facilitating the concept of ageing in place

Abstract

Since the hygiene condition and medical services improved in the past few decades, the expectation of life has been lengthened generally. With the baby boom effect, the mass increase in fertility following the World War II result in the problem of ageing population around the world nowadays. The phenomenon alerts the governments of global countries to solve the anticipated ageing problem by catering the needs of the elderly. In addition, the needs of the elderly are changing with the improvement of education level and affluence level. It contributes to elderly in middle-class occupying a larger proportion of the elderly in Hong Kong nowadays. Even though the government has introduced various kind of social policies to deal with the increasing demand and changing needs of the elderly, it is still not enough to satisfy the rising aspiration of the middle-income elderly. In order to fill the market niche for the elderly in the middle-income group, the Hong Kong government invited Hong Kong Housing Society to undertake a tailor-made housing scheme for the elderly on a basis of leased-for-life. Under the Senior Citizen Residence Scheme (SEN), it aims to provide an affordable and quality accommodation with integrated service for the middle-income elderly. As the SEN scheme is built upon the concept of "ageing-in-place" and "continuum of care", it seeks to strike an excellent to enhance the quality of life for the elderly residents. Since the SEN scheme is a pilot project, it would be considered as a relatively new and initiative development of elderly housing project comparing to the overseas' housing development. It is valuable to carry out a comprehensive assessment on the achievement of the SEN scheme. As the scheme is developed upon the concept of "ageing-in-place" and "continuum of care", this paper will focus on assess the effectiveness of the scheme in facilitating the concept of ageing-in-place in various aspects. Also, it will investigate the effectiveness of the scheme in affecting the expectation on the future housing arrangement of the elderly. The result of the assessment would be provide a reference for the authority to foresee whether there is any improvement for further development of ageing-in-place policy. As a result, it believed that the assessment of this paper is significant to gives a recommendation for the development of the upcoming project to build a quality living place for the elderly to age-in-place.iii