As previously announced, this week my Parliamentary Secretariat began introducing new services for the elderly in Gozo. For an island such as Gozo, community services for the elderly are crucial, since a large proportion of the population are elderly. This is an alarming situation, considering the fact that there are few to nothing by way of services offered by the government for the older members of the community.

Last Wednesday I visited Villa San Lawrenz, a long-term private residential care home in Gozo situated in the village of San Lawrence. The government is now in a position to offer its first respite service in Gozo. We have resorted to a public private partnership with the Home administration and now have two beds to be used for respite care. As a Parliamentary Secretariat, we strongly believe that the respite service must be greatly enhanced across our islands and now we can pride ourselves on a truly national respite service offering a maximum of three weeks care for an elderly resident, should his or her relatives need some time to rest or a break for any other reason that may arise.

Residential demands are quite high on a national level. The updated waiting list amounts to 1,990 with the highest at 2,070. I am fully aware of, and totally understand, all individual concerns but as the government we must look at the whole picture. We have therefore adopted a rationalisation plan whereby applications for residential care are channelled according to the level of dependency of the applicant. This means, for example, that only highly dependent cases will be admitted to St Vincent de Paule. Admission to all homes will depend only on the needs of the applicant.

While the waiting list in Malta is known, the waiting list in Gozo is ‘hidden’. This is because those requiring long-term care are admitted to the respective male or female wards in Gozo General Hospital in. In reality there is a waiting list and, in fact, last Monday the Malta Union of Midwives and Nurses out hit at the government over the problem of social cases at the hospital which is causing overcrowding in the wards.

As the Parliamentary Secretariat responsible for long-term care on a national level, we intervened and concluded a similar agreement to the respite service and now have the first 10 beds to be used for long-term care in Gozo.

We will now be focusing on such community services and announcing more of them. This does not only apply for services provided for the elderly but also for services for people with disability such as day centres and residential services. It is indeed a long and winding road, but we will walk the length of it to achieve results.