In its first year, the government has succeeded in increasing the number of available beds in homes for the elderly by more than 100 – and this figure excludes beds at St Vincent de Paul Residence.

During its last three consecutive legislations, the Nationalist government achieved only an extra 450 beds – as a result of public-private partnerships. The present administration, on the other hand, has secured as many as 97 beds through the PPP scheme in around 13 months. It has also introduced a transparent system for admission into care homes, whereby a multi-disciplinary team assesses the social and healthcare needs of applicants. This ensures that older people are admitted to homes that can meet their requirements.

With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly obvious that Simon Busuttil cannot see the wood for the trees and is unable to understand what is really crucial in contemporary trends in Maltese ageing policy. He wants to remind Maltese citizens that the first public-private policy contract was signed in 1994, but then wants them to forget that for almost two decades the Nationalist Party in government failed to do one iota of work as far as establishing national minimum standards for care homes for the elderly.

The National Minimum Standards for Care Homes has now been published and is available for public consultation. For Busuttil’s party, the priority was to deposit older people in care homes with no consideration for their human rights, and personal and social requisites. Indeed, until now, government care homes were devoid of a Charter of Rights and Responsibilities for Residents; until two months ago, the residents of government care homes were not involved in the running of the facilities; until four months ago, the Department for the Elderly and Community Care included no active ageing unit to cater for the leisure and learning interests of residents of care homes.

Busuttil’s adoption of an emotional temperament when visiting Casa Antonia was, without doubt, orchestrated to camouflage the fact that the previous government administration operated like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Unfortunately for Busuttil, amnesia is in short supply amongst Maltese citizens.

Lest we forget, older people and professionals in the field of ageing were for many years waiting for a national strategy for active ageing, something that never materialised, with the present Parliamentary Secretariat not only having to work on the draft of the strategy from scratch but also succeeding in having it adopted in the first seven months of the government.

Lest we forget, Mario Galea convened a Malta Dementia Strategy Group to draft a National Dementia Strategy for the government, a task that was completed and delivered to the government in January 2010, but left on the shelf for a total of three years. More recently, Mario Galea had the cheek to admonish the government for revising the 2010 strategy, as if social policy existed in a temporal vacuum. The National Dementia Strategy has been published for public consultation, something over which the previous government dragged its feet for more than three years.

Apart from that, we have embarked on a series of projects, on both a short and long-term basis, at the St Vincent de Paul Residence. It is the Parliamentary Secretariat’s aim to achieve excellent levels of holistic care and the government has succeeded in refurbishing Ward SJ8 at the residence in record time and on on budget. This week, work has started on Wards SF3 and SF4, a €1.5 million project. Since we believe in active ageing, we have converted the Residence’s Activity Centre into an Active Ageing Unit with a team that has organised a record number of activities for both St Vincent de Paul residents and older people in the local community.

We have also introduced new IT systems in all the Residence’s wards, including Wi-Fi. Remarkable as it may seem, prior to the present administration there was not even a computerised inventory system. The government has also worked on improving the Residence’s food menu and has introduced one that is completely new and visually-friendly. However, the most effective innovation at St Vincent de Paul Residence has been the appointment of its administrative team, consisting of a CEO, an HR and Financial Manager and also a Quality Assurance and Customer Care team. This clearly shows that the labour government wants to achieve excellence and professionalism in this sector.

Dr Caruana is Parliamentary Secretary for the Rights of People with Disability and Active Aging