Legacy

Over the past two decades, the work of CoA has been shaping the development of long-term care policies and programmes in Hong Kong. Early work by Prof. Iris Chi, the Founding Director, led to the implementation of the Standardised Care Need Assessment Mechanism for Elderly Services by the Social Welfare Department (SWD) in November 2000. Under this Mechanism, an internationally recognised assessment tool ─ Minimum Data Set-Home Care ─ is adopted to ascertain the care needs of older adults and match them with appropriate services. Prof. Nelson Chow, the then-Director of CoA, believed that ageing is a problem faced by people of all social classes and it is not just a problem of the poor. Prof. Joe Leung, the then-Director of CoA strived to build an elderly employment-friendly society through extensive studies. The research conducted by Dr Ernest Chui, the then-Director of CoA, has led to the adaptation of the Long-term Care Voucher System by the SWD. The voucher system encompasses both the Community Care Service (CSS) and the Residential Care Service (RCS) and adopting the “money-following-the user” principle to provide an additional choice for older adults in need of long-term care services. In recent years, Prof. Terry Lum, the then-Director of CoA, has led the team to develop an ageing-in-place model for older adults living in public rental housing and conducted a study to enhance the infrastructure of the long-term care system in Hong Kong.