Eleanor Yap
A little help can go a long way. In March this year, Helpling came into the eldercare sector by offering caregiving services on top of its existing cleaning services. It was the same time as when the Ministry of Manpower expanded its Household Services Scheme (HSS) by introducing a pilot programme to provide HSS companies with more migrant workers to provide basic child- and elder-minding services so as to meet households’ needs for domestic services.
Shared Paolo Castro, Helpling’s category lead (home care), “Since Helpling has been in the business of offering on-demand home services since 2015 in Singapore, it was the natural progression that we expand our services to elderly care as well.”
He added: “Our talent pool are trained caregivers who have had years of providing care as live-in caregivers for Singaporean families. They were previously unable to offer their talents due to their scope of work being limited, but that is no longer the case with the Government now allowing elder-minding as part of their scope.”
Its team of caregivers are trained to support seniors with ADLs or Activities of Daily Living including oral feeding and medication support, exercise and simple activities, assisted showering, dressing and toileting, movement with wheelchair and walking stick, accompaniment to hospitals/daycare centres, and light housekeeping and laundry. According to Castro, Helpling has done about 3,000+ hours of caregiving services with some 70+ households, and have a pool of about 850+ in the company across all its various services, with the majority having years of caregiving experience.
Asked if Helpling have helped those with dementia, Castro said: “We actually have quite a few customers whose elderly suffer from dementia or are in early-onset. Some of our caregivers have exclusively taken care of elderly with dementia, and play Sudoku with some to keep their minds active, and for others, simple conversation and companionship to ensure they keep well.”
He said that currently they are unable to provide palliative care and help customers with highly intensive medical care needs such as tube feeding or severe wounds that require a medical professional to dress and clean them. “If it’s something that requires a medically-trained professional, we draw a clear line between caregiving and nursing.”
For those it can help, Helpling is able to accommodate last-minute requests, providing a caregiver as soon as four hours. Caregivers come from Singapore as well as other countries like Myanmar, Vietnam and Philippines, and are trained professionally by nurses and are certified in the Light Home Caregiving Skills Course.
Castro added, “Aside from the caregiving course, all our caregivers are required to go through Helpling’s hotel-grade housekeeping training to drill in our proprietary 50-point checklist. This is key to our mission to provide an all-in-one, family on-demand caregiving experience that provides care for the home and its members as a whole and not just the elderly.”
Helpling will match the caregiver to the carer based on his or her language abilities including basic Mandarin and dialects, customer reviews and past care experiences.
Castro said, “Quite a few decided to try us out once, and then proceeded to book permanent relationships with our caregivers, having them over every morning daily, for example.”
Helpling charges S$23 per hour for its services. Caregivers can ask if the Home Caregiver Grant, which aids families with a monthly payout of S$250 to S$500 to Singaporeans who provide care for their loved ones requiring assisted daily living with moderate to severe disabilities, can be used towards Helpling’s service.
So what’s next for the company? Said Castro: “After caregiving and assisted daily living, we plan to expand into at-home nursing services and specialised care services such as speech, physio and occupational therapy to offer a more complete platform for the elderly. … When the HSS scheme expands services towards caring for those with intellectual disabilities, we will grow into that space as well. For the time being we wish to focus on providing the best care possible to the underserved elderly population of Singapore.”
For more information, go to: www.helpling.com.sg/elderly-care.
(** PHOTO CREDIT: Helpling)
