Jockey Club Centre for Positive Ageing celebrates 15 years of progress in helping build a dementia-friendly city

09/17/2015

Fifteen years ago, in response to the ageing population and the needs of people with dementia, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust donated HK$81 million to establish the Jockey Club Centre for Positive Ageing (JCCPA) – the first integrative dementia care centre in the city. Also, a series of of public education programmes were organised to enhance awareness and acceptance of dementia patients.

Today (17 September), Club Steward Mrs Margaret Leung Ko May Yee visited JCCPA to officiate at its 15th Anniversary celebrations and mark the completion of the Dementia Concern Campaign.  She was joined at the event by Executive Director, Charities and Community, Leong Cheung; Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung; Elderly Commission Chairman Professor Alfred Chan; Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Professor Fok Tai-fai; former President of CUHK Professor Charles Kao and his wife Gwen Kao; JCCPA Director Professor Timothy Kwok; and the Dementia Concern Campaign’s Honorary Ambassador, celebrity Paula Tsui.

The Club is dedicated to improving the quality of life of the elderly, having contributed over HK$1.15 billion to elderly-related projects over the past decade. In the coming three to five years, helping build Hong Kong into an age-friendly city will be one of three strategic focus areas for the Club's Charities Trust.

Mrs Leung said that the 15th Anniversary of JCCPA marked a significant milestone in the Club’s commitment to elderly services. “Over the years, JCCPA has been providing different services for over 46,000 people,” she said. “In spite of these encouraging results, we will not be complacent because there is an increasing prevalence of dementia resulting from the ageing population. These social needs also underline the pivotal roles and responsibilities of JCCPA in coping with the challenges that dementia brings to society.”

Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung said, “Over the past 15 years, JCCPA has been sparing no efforts in providing one-stop integrated services and training for elderly dementia patients, aimed at delaying their cognitive decline by maintaining their normal social lives, as well as offering various types of support to relieve the pressure on their caregivers. JCCPA shares the same objective as the Government in providing community support for elderly people with dementia and their caregivers, and their contribution deserves support from the community.”

The Trust-funded Dementia Concern Campaign which concluded today was launched by JCCPA last year to raise public awareness of the illness. It included the first-ever Dementia Experience, a tailor-made training programme for front-line staff in both the public and private sectors, aimed at helping participants understand the difficulties faced by dementia patients through simulation activities, and encouraging them to lend a helping hand. Some 3,000 people took part during the 16-month programme. In addition, the campaign offered more than 90 talks and training workshops, benefiting some 20,000 participants in total.  More information is available at www.d-concern.com.

To understand public awareness of dementia, JCCPA commissioned the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies to conduct a phone survey in July this year, in which about 1,000 Hong Kong residents were interviewed. It found that approximately 95% of respondents believed they know what dementia was, a 10 percentage points increase compared with a similar survey conducted a decade ago. Also, more respondents were aware of the early symptoms of dementia, and willing to seek medical consultation when they suspected their relatives might be suffering from dementia.

JCCPA was set up by the Club’s Charities Trust in 2000 and operates under the auspices of the Faculty of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It provides integrated day-care services, home-based training and short-term residency for dementia sufferers, as well as support services for caregivers to help relieve their burden.  The Centre has also committed considerable resources to applied research studies on dementia treatment and the effectiveness of different care services.  More information about JCCPA can be found at www.jccpa.org.hk

Elderly care is one of the prime concerns of the Club. Besides the establishment of JCCPA, the Trust has funded the establishment of The CUHK Jockey Club Institute of Ageing (IoA), as well as commissioned the IoA to conduct a survey collating quantifiable data on local senior citizens, and compared it with benchmarks adopted by the Global AgeWatch Index. It also launched the Jockey Club Elderly Facilities Modernisation Scheme to upgrade facilities of about 250 elderly centres in the community; funded the city’s first-ever brain health promotional vehicle to help diagnose early-stage dementia patients, which provides outreach support for seniors across all 18 districts through preliminary checks on memory problems; and set up the Jockey Club Cadenza Hub at Fu Shin Estate in Tai Po, the first such facility in Hong Kong to offer one-stop integrated health and social care services for the elderly.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club
Founded in 1884, The Hong Kong Jockey Club is a world-class horse racing operator and Hong Kong’s largest community benefactor, as well as one of Asia’s most prestigious membership clubs. Operating as a not-for-profit organisation, the Club allocates its surplus funds for charitable and community projects. In 2014/15, its donations reached a record $3.87 billion, and in the last decade alone it supported over 1,300 projects. The Club is also Hong Kong’s largest single taxpayer, contributing a record HK$20.05 billion in 2014/15. With about 70% of its revenue given back to society every year through donations and tax contributions, The Hong Kong Jockey Club delivers a significantly higher return to the community than any other racing and/or sports betting organisation in the world. As a socially responsible organisation, the Club helps Government combat illegal betting and advocates responsible gambling. The Club is also one of Hong Kong’s largest employers with over 24,000 full-time and part-time staff. Committed to global excellence and giving back to society, the Club is always “riding high together for a better future” with the people of Hong Kong.