Caregiver

The Government, employers, and the community each has a role to play in supporting caregivers so that they can balance caregiving with their other responsibilities sustainably.

• To this end, the Government recently enhanced the Home Caregiving Grant to further alleviate caregiving expenses. We will continue to study how we can better support caregivers. One way is to expand our system of aged care, so that our seniors can age with dignity and grace. More details are in Chapter 5.
• More employers are also introducing workplace support for caregivers, such as providing paid time-off and extending additional healthcare services to employees. We will encourage and promote more of such initiatives by businesses.
• We will study suggestions to better support working caregivers as they care for their elderly, ill or disabled family members, through measures such as caregiver leave, flexible work arrangements or other forms of workplace support.
• We will create an ecosystem of support for caregivers and improve their access to available resources, such as through caregiver support groups. For example, the Caregivers Alliance Limited offers training programmes and events to connect caregivers to a support network of volunteers, and to reduce the barriers for caregivers in accessing services.

• We will continue to support PwDs and their families across life stages, as set out in the Enabling Masterplan 2030 (EMP2030). This includes doing more to alleviate their financial burden, in particular to increase the affordability of early intervention, education and care services for families with children with developmental and special educational needs in the medium term.
• Out-of-pocket expenses for families with a child with developmental and special educational needs are typically higher due to the costs of additional interventions and the higher fees. We will provide additional support for these children by defraying their families’ out-of-pocket costs for early intervention services, Special Education schools, and Special Student Care Centres.
• We are deepening support for students with Special Educational Needs, in both mainstream and Special Education schools, as well as our Institutes of Higher Learning. We have been providing more resourcing and staff training in our mainstream schools and Institutes of Higher Learning, and will also strengthen the professional development of educators in Special Education schools. We will elaborate more on how we, as a society, can better support persons with disabilities and their families in Chapters 4 and Chapter 6.