Care for Older Persons in ASEAN+3: The Role of Families, Local and National Support Systems

Completed

Objective

Increasing life expectancies and low birth rates in ASEAN countries have increased concerns regarding the provision, access, and quality of care provided for older adults. The challenges are not only in meeting the current and future projections of long term care needs but also how fast to scale up long term care while maintaining fiscal sustainability for the countries. Singapore promotes a model where care responsibilities are foremost the responsibility of the individual, followed by the family, the community and finally the government. Thus, the different actors (family, community, voluntary welfare organisations, private sector and government) take varying degrees of responsibilities in funding, regulating, and actually providing care. These distributions of tasks have been changing over time: for example, the government is increasingly taking the role of being a care provider.

The summary report on Care for older adults in ASEAN has been published and was introduced by the Prime Minister of Thailand at Thailand's Social Expo on August 3, 2018 in Bangkok. ASEAN will publish the full consolidated report on all the countries later in 2018. This project is led by Chulalongkorn University, and will provide the first comprehensive report on long term care for the 13 ASEAN countries, China, Japan and South Korea. As these countries experience rapid population ageing, we hope that this would provide a platform for increased discussion and cooperation among ASEAN+3 countries on care for older adults. The country report on Singapore was written by GERI and CARE with inputs from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and of Social and Family Development (MSF).

Collaborators

College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Department of Community Development, Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, Brunei Darussalam
Department of Elderly Welfare, Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, Cambodia
Social Welfare Research and Development Centre, Ministry of Social Affairs, Indonesia
National Committee for Disabled People and The Elderly, Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, Lao PDR
Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
Department of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, Myanmar
Department of Social Welfare and Development, Philippines
Department of Social Welfare, Incheon National University, Republic of Korea
Department of Social Protection Studies, Institute of Labor Science and Social Affairs, Vietnam