NEGOTIATING SPACE FOR ELDERLY PERSONS IN HDB ESTATES

Abstract

The rapid ageing of Singapore's population, together with the government's explicit policy of encouraging elderly persons to remain living with or close to their families, has made the provision of community-based services for the elderly to aid their continued living within the community an important issue in Singapore today. The state's espousal of family care for the elderly population is consistently reflected in its nation-wide social policies that affect older persons, as well as in its provision of community-based support services for them. The state is thus in a position to structure the material and social conditions that elderly persons find themselves in. This allocation of space by the government affects both the elderly person's private home sphere where most of the family caregiving is situated, as well as the public sphere outside the home where the community-based services for the elderly are found. The large role that the government plays in the allocation of space for elderly persons is important because often underlying this is the state's and service-providers' perception and definition of the elderly people's needs. This may be different with the needs as felt and defined by the elderly persons themselves, and this incongruence can lead to a top-down provision of services that does not meet the needs of elderly persons. This study therefore examines whether such an incongruence exists, and thus to what extent the state is presently able to meet the needs of elderly persons living within the community. At the same time, the state's allocation of space for elderly persons is not a one-way process. because elderly persons are able to respond and negotiate for space in their living environment. The study confirms that elderly persons desire to retain their independence and autonomy while meeting their needs and receiving care-giving from both family members and state services. The various responses that the elderly persons exhibit represents the different ways they negotiate for space to meet their needs while striving to maintain their independence and self-determination. The instruments they use to portray their needs across to their family and to the state may encompass the use of reciprocity, obligations and duties; and their responses can range from utilisation of the services provided, to partial use, to even a complete rejection and the formation of their own informal groups to meet their needs. The findings of the fieldwork illustrate this range of responses and reactions from elderly persons. The respondents illustrated the different channels they used to meet their physical and social needs, with the family and informal kin supports forming the most common route adopted to elicit care-giving and aid. The possession of such kin networks that effectively meets the elderly respondents' needs therefore supports the state's encouragement of family caregiving. For those whose kin supports were lacking or inadequate, dependence and utilisation of formal community services was greater. Among the users of such services, most expressed satisfaction with the service provision. This was evident especially for the health-related services, which reflects the general effectiveness of these state-provided services in meeting the elderly person's needs. However, at the same time, the high proportion of non-users of these services hints at a possible incongruence between service provision and the elderly peoples' needs. The interviews with the higher state authorities and the service providers reveal the possible reasons for this mismatch, the foremost being the top-down approach and the "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude generally adopted that excludes rather than integrates non-users of the services. This leaves little room for feedback from the elderly users or their direct participation in the planning and decision-making process. In balance, some efforts have been made to counter this paternalistic tendency in service provision and to grant the elderly users more autonomy and self-determination, as seen in the success of services such as the mutual help groups. However, more needs to be done to empower elderly persons and incorporate their inputs not only in the provision of such community-based services, but also in the social policies created by the state that affect their circumstances and well-being. This study aims to emphasise the necessity of and the urgency to which this must be achieved.