The government should improve Taiwan’s long-term care system by providing more comprehensive services and avoiding overreliance on foreign caregivers, lawmakers from the ruling Kuomintang said April 10.
“An estimated 650,000 to 900,000 households in Taiwan require long-term care, but at present these needs are mostly covered by 200,000 foreign care providers,” Legislator Yang Yu-hsin said at a news conference called by the KMT legislative caucus in Taipei.
Trained and supervised local workers should form the basis of the country’s long-term care system, she said.
“But before such an arrangement becomes functional, current regulations governing application for foreign caregivers should be relaxed to meet real needs,” Yang said. For instance, other indexes should be introduced to assess a person’s care needs, instead of relying exclusively on the Barthel Index.
Legislator Wu Yu-jen pointed out that the Barthel Index applies only to the person requiring care. The government should incorporate a measure of the burden shouldered by the family, he added.
In response, Lin San-quei, head of the Council of Labor Affairs Bureau of Employment and Vocational Training, said the agency would seek to make the application process easier and more realistic.
The CLA will also work to integrate foreign and local sources of labor to solve the problems of rising demand and insufficient supply, Lin said, noting that the demand for foreign care providers has increased steadily over the past 10 years, reaching 183,000 this year.
“In the long-run, Taiwan must rely on its own labor force to provide care for the country’s elderly and incapacitated citizens,” said Teng Sue-wen, director-general of the Department of Health Bureau of Nursing and Health Services Development.
According to Teng, around 430,000 senior citizens are in need of long-term care, with local caregivers covering 22 percent of demand, up from the initial 3 percent four years ago when a national long-term care system was instituted. (THN)