Taiwan Church News
3383 Edition
26 December, 2016 – 1 January, 2017
Church Ministry
Insufficient Care Worker: A Big Concern Of Taiwan’s Long-Term Care Program 2.0
Reported by Lin Yi-yin
On December 22, entitled as “An evaluation of the execution of long-term care program 1.0 among Taiwan’s local governments”, a press conference was held by Taiwan Social Welfare Union(TSWU) at Taipei. Based on a comprehensive data analysis, collected from local governments’ report of their performance of long-term care in 2016, TSWU listed their findings of defects in the so-called “long-term care program 1.0” and delivered their warnings before the long-term care program 2.0 is about to launch from 1 January 2017.
According to TSWU, the 2016 data showed: 1) human resources of care worker is obviously insufficient. Comparing to current 9,057 care workers nationwide, Taiwan’s central government estimates that at least an extra 50,000 jobs should be created in the industry of long-term care program 2.0; 2) care service centers in some local governments are not only insufficient but also unevenly located; 3) on the service items, like day care, respite care, and home health care, there is a big gap existed between central government’s target and local authority’s actual performance ; 4) a big variance of long-term care performance also existed within local governments due to their different resources, budgets, policy priorities, and etc.
In order to stabilize the quality of care worker against an average job leaving rate at 12.17%, TSWU suggested that care worker’s salary should be leveled up and better they could be recruited by public institutes instead of private ones. In the meantime, the government should work harder to inform the public about the accessibility and goods of this new social welfare program – long-term care program 2.0.
Translated by Peter Wolfe
Urging the government to rectify some critical defects of current log-term care practice, Taiwan Social Welfare Union launched a press conference, entitled as “An evaluation of the execution of long-term care program 1.0 among Taiwan’s local governments”, at Taipei on 22 December, 2016.
Photo by Lin Yi-yin
