Improving Care for Seniors: Learn How to Plan Activities for Clients at Tsao Foundation

Planning an activity for the clients is not easy for any Community Care professional. Not only having to ensure that the activity is engaging and enjoyable enough for the clients, the staff has the need to deal with the logistics, preparation of equipment, and to ensure the safety of the clients.

But planning an activity can be made easier if one applies these principles:

• Widen one’s knowledge in different domains of cognitive, psychosocial and community-reintegration

• Apply environmental assessment in the community
• Facilitate group sessions with proper planning stages
• Develop an activities kit which can be useful for future activities

Still confused? Tsao Foundation is here to help.

The Hua Mei Training Academy (HMTA) under Tsao Foundation offers Activities Planning and Implementation programmes for Community Care professionals to better serve seniors, especially in the areas of activity creation and relationship-building. The HMTA derives its course content from both Hua Mei Centre for Successful Ageing’s 20 years’ of good work and expertise, as well as the research findings from the International Longevity Centre (ILC) Singapore.

Here are a few of the courses you can sign up for to make activity-planning a breeze!

Community Befriending of Seniors ($600, 14 hours, Blended)

Suitable for: Staff in Active Ageing Centres, Active Ageing Care Hubs and Interim Befriending Panel who provide Befriending services and manage Befrienders.

What you’ll learn: This course will prepare Community Care professionals to interact and communicate with seniors more effectively, empowering them to better befriend and connect with their clients. The course is also designed to help improve observation skills so that Community Care professionals can better look out for their clients’ needs, specifically their health status and home environment safety.

Basic Counselling Skills in Addressing Emotional Needs for Older Persons ($800, 16 Hours, Virtual Face-to-Face)

Suitable for: Eldercare frontline staff who provide direct care in intermediate and long-term care sectors

What you’ll learn: The focus of the course is to teach basic counselling skills to address the emotional needs of seniors and train staff to build up strong and healthy relationships with their clients to better support them emotionally. Through case studies, roleplay, group discussions and more, the course teaches staff how to empathise with their clients’ emotional needs and ask the right questions to better understand them.

Activities Planning and Implementation for Day Care and Nursing Homes

The objective of these courses is to help train and inspire Community Care professionals to plan better activities for Seniors that specifically address certain concerns. Activities Planning and Implementation for Day Care and Nursing Homes has three variations: Cognitive Activities, Psychosocial Activities and Community Reintegration. Read on for the specifics of each course.

Cognitive Activities (Basic) ($1800, 34 hours, Virtual Face-to-Face)

Suitable for: Support Care Staff

What you’ll learn: This course trains Community Care professionals to create activities that focus on engaging the cognitive functions of seniors. Course content includes the different domains of cognition, an in-depth introduction to the common cognitive tests used in day care or nursing homes, and how to interpret and analyse the results of the assessments.

Psychosocial Activities (Basic) ($1800, 34 hours, Virtual Face-to-Face)

Suitable for: Support Care Staff

What you’ll learn: The objective of this course is to coach Community Care professionals to create activities that strengthen the psychosocial well-being of seniors. In particular, people-centred principles are highlighted in the creation of the activities. Participants will be given the opportunity to co-develop a resource kit that consists of an array of ready-to-implement activities as well as do individual sharing and role-play.

Community Reintegration (Basic) ($1800, 34 hours, Virtual Face-to-Face)

A senior playing a development game with a support care staff.

Suitable for: Support Care Staff

What you’ll learn: Support Care Staff will learn how to co-develop activities to facilitate community reintegration. Notably, the course centres around community and people-centredness in the creation of the activities, differentiating between activities to be conducted at all personal, organisational, and community-wide levels. Participants will be given the opportunity to co-develop a resource kit that consists of an array of ready-to-implement activities as well as an evaluation on their holistic and therapeutic activity plans.

Working with Families (Intermediate) ($350, 8 hours, Virtual Face-to-Face)

Suitable for: Community Care professionals who communicate with Seniors and their loved ones

What you’ll learn: This course will help Community Care professionals establish a good understanding of family relationships, as well as develop the analytical tools to examine family dynamics. Participants will also hone their ability to improve on care plans so as to better involve the family in the care of their loved ones. Genogram-crafting, followed up with genogram trend recognition and the analysis of its implications, will be incorporated into the course as well.

If any of the above courses have piqued your interest, or if you would like to find out more about the other courses Tsao Foundation offers, do click into the Learning Management System (LMS) portal and filter for Tsao Foundation (TSAO) to access and learn more about the courses. Enquiries should be directed to Hua Mei Training Academy through email (hmta@tsaofoundation.org) or telephone (6593 9558).