Retirement Homes?

I read this letter from Lily Fu, Plan for your Golden years..... and agree with her that in the current "Age of the Rat Race", leaving your aged parents in Good nursing homes is not a sign of decreasing filial piety but borne of out dire necessity. However, she rightly emphasized on "Good" nursing homes, as from experience, almost all of the homes currently in operations in the country are usually places where you would not even wish upon your enemies! I do visit homes on a fairly regular basis, and from what I have observed even in the "best" of them, we really would be heartless thinking that such places are really those abodes that we want to leave our cherished parents and relatives to see out their remaining part of their lives in some form of dignity. Most of these homes are guilty of one or more of the following:

• Caregivers are usually underpaid and UNTRAINED foreign workers, some of them even working illegally.
  
• Almost half of them hold down two jobs, to make ends meet, and as such their performance suffers, I have seen one foreign 'cook' who doubled up as a night shift caregiver, and sleeps most of the time, leaving the inmates unattended
• To prevent the demented, or the depressive residents from making nuisances of themselves, they are tied up most of the time, to the beds, except during "feeding" time
• To manage time, as the homes are always undermanned, caregivers normally bathe the residents very early, and sometimes even bathe them in groups, with cold water
• Dinner is usually given between 5 to 6 pm, and the residents are packed off to bed immediately after that, leaving the caregivers free to rest, or to take on the second job.
• There is no interaction between the caregivers and the residents, most of whom are left in front of TV sets, or tied up in bed, in between meals.
  
• Even the elderly who are mobile, but need assistance or a walking frame, soon become disabled and wheelchair ridden, once they move to the nursing homes, as they will be forced to wear diapers, and not allowed to 'move on their own'. Caregivers don't have the time or the patience to look after the stronger ones individually
  
• Exercise equipment and walkways are just for show, as without assistance most of the residents soon become too weak to use them on their own
• The food given to the residents in most of these homes are pitiful and tasteless. I know of a 'classy' home that offers a blind resident, fried meehoon the whole day
• Most of the homes are also converted from old residential houses, and are not purpose built to care for the elderly. I have seen homes where the elderly and the sick are just left lying in lobbies of such homes, just next to a reception counter.
  

Some children will use such homes to "abandon" their parents, other will use hospitals.

Unless there is a conscious effort to 'humanise' geriatric nursing care in the country, by giving generous tax incentives/holidays for the setting up of proper nursing homes, and by initiating proper training for professional caregivers on a large scale, to me, sending your parents to the care of a nursing home in Malaysia at the present moment, can be a very traumatic experience for either party, and one which you will not want to wish upon yourself when the time arrives..

Good nursing homes only with incentives!