Mid-career Entrants Taking Up Non-nursing Roles at Senior or Ageing Care Facilities via Government-funded Career Programmes

The following question stood in the name of

Ms See Jinli Jean –: 7 To ask the Minister for Health for each year over the last three years (a) what is the number of mid-career entrants who took up non-nursing roles at senior or ageing care facilities via Government-funded career programmes; (b) what is the retention rate of the mid-career entrants; and (c) what measures will the Ministry be introducing to improve the retention rate.

Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim (Nominated Member): Question No 7, please.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health (Ms Rahayu Mahzam) (for the Minister for Health): Mr Speaker, between 2021 and 2023, about 1,400 individuals joined the community care sector in non-nursing jobs every year, including through schemes, such as the Community Care Manpower Development Award and the Senior Management Associate Scheme, for the training and induction of mid-career entrants into management positions.

We do not track the retention rate for this group. To retain staff, the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) have been working with community care organisations to implement job redesign, enhance the competitiveness of community care staff salaries and recently published salary guidelines which would help inform job seekers on the expected remuneration in community care roles.

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh, you have a supplementary question? Please go ahead.

Mr Pritam Singh (Aljunied): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think the Prime Minister announced the expansion of Active Ageing Centres at his National Day Rally last year. And in view of what would be significant manpower requirements, is there a plan that the Ministry has to ramp up or mobilise this manpower and what sort of numbers are we looking at from the Ministry's standpoint?

Ms Rahayu Mahzam: I thank the Member for the question. Indeed, manpower is an aspect that we have been monitoring quite closely, especially as we transform the efforts in the healthcare sector, in particular, with ageing. Yesterday, we had also another discussion on the Allied Health Professionals. So, we are looking at the different sectors, the different services that we need to have in place and the different manpower.

With regard to the statistics, Sir, I do not have the data on hand. Perhaps the Member would want to file a separate Parliamentary Question on this.