SINGAPORE - Home care and centre-based care will get industry-wide guidelines to help improve their standards, said the Ministry of Health, which launched a public consultation on a draft of these guidelines on Tuesday.

Home care supports seniors by providing health and personal care services at their homes, while the centres are places in the community where old folk can make use of health, social and personal care services during the day.

Two committees comprising service providers, healthcare professionals and policy experts drafted guidelines for each sector. The proposed guidelines reflect many existing good practices in the sectors, and set out clearly the standard of care that all centre-based care and home care providers should achieve.

They also serve as a basis for training and capability enhancement programmes.

The Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) will be developing a guidebook to explain the guidelines and provide sample tools and checklists. AIC will also develop training roadmaps and curricula to help service providers build up their capabilities.

Members of the public can see a draft of these guidelines at www.moh.gov.sg/centre-care-guidelines and www.moh.gov.sg/home-care-guidelines. They can email moh_careguidelines@moh.gov.sg with feedback until Oct 2 this year.