SINGAPORE - Caring for senior citizens include looking after their social and emotional needs, rather than just tackling functional or health-related issues, said Health Minister Gan Kim Yong.

That is why a key focus of the Ministerial Committee on Ageing is to expand the scope of intermediate and long-term care to facilitate ageing-in-place, he wrote in his latest blog post today.

He stressed that Singapore needs to be ready to provide holistic, accessible and quality care for a larger senior population in the years to come and the Ministry of Health (MOH) will work closely with partners in the sector to improve the quality of care for Singapore's greying population.

Touching on plans to expand and enhance home-based care, he said more day care centres will be built in heartlands to offer integrated services for seniors who are functional and healthy, as well as those with medical needs.

These centres not only provide a place for seniors to socialise, but also access services such as nursing, rehabilitative services and dementia management programmes.

One example is the Touch Home Care centre, which recently opened in Jurong. A team of nurses and occupational therapists are stationed at a satellite centre in a void deck to deliver home-based nursing care to bedridden patients in the west.

Another centre at Bedok, operated by the Salvation Army, provides day care services as well as day dementia, day rehabilitative services and nursing care for seniors living in the nearby HDB blocks, while their caregivers go to work.

While demand for the Bedok Multi Service Centre's services is overwhelming, Mr Gan has suggested to the management consider using the centre as a platform to stage services to their clients at their homes, instead of expanding their Bedok centre to cater to the demand.

To make home and community-based care a more viable option for Singaporeans, the Government will continue to invest in building more such centres in the communnity and work with aged care providers on manpower and financing initiatives, pledged the minister.

MOH will also study how to enhance home-based care for those who are discharged from hospitals, in the immediate few months after they are discharged. This would allow caregivers to better cope with the transition and pre-empt potential re-admissions into hospitals.

For those who need institutional care, however, the Government is also building more nursing homes.

Singapore needs up to 15,600 nursing home beds by 2020. There are now some 9,000 beds, with another 1,800 beds in the pipeline.

MOH will further study how rehabilitative services within new nursing homes can also cater to other seniors living in the neighbourhood, and provide respite care options for caregivers as well. CHANNEL NEWSASIA