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Care in older age not only takes place across generations but also across borders. For Singapore, our carers could be family members and friends based locally or living abroad and extending long-distance care to ageing loved ones back home. They may at some point feel the need to move back to Singapore to provide care. We are also a nation that is cared for by inflows of foreign domestic workers and healthcare workers.

How are we a nation reliant on care migration? What becomes of ageing when our carers are constantly on the move? And what emotions come into play when we consider the impacts of these moves for those who give and receive care? Join our expert panelists from academia, and the public and private sectors as we discuss these thought-provoking questions and more.

MODERATOR

Elaine Lynn-Ee HO is Associate Professor at the Department of Geography and Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. She is co-author of Care Where You Are: Enabling Singaporeans to Age Well in the Community (with Shirlena Huang; Straits Times Press, 2018), and Principal Investigator of “Transnational Relations, Ageing and Care Ethics (TRACE)”, a multi-sited project on the care flows connecting Singapore to the Asia Pacific.

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

Gillian TEE is the co-founder and CEO of Homage, a senior home care solution that combines professional caregivers with smart technology to provide home caregiving to seniors, allowing them to age at home with grace, control and dignity. To date, Homage has provided more than 100,000 hours of home caregiving to seniors in Singapore and Malaysia and raised over $7mil SGD from venture capital firms Golden Gate Ventures, Seed Plus, 500Startups and grants from DBS Foundation, RaiSE and Singapore International Chamber of Commerce. Prior to Homage, she co-founded Rocketrip, a Y-Combinator and Bessemer Ventures-backed travel tech startup based in New York City and Silicon Valley that’s raised more than $30mil USD. Prior to Rocketrip, Gillian held various sales, business development, product management and technology leadership positions at Amazon and Accenture. As a Singaporean native, Gillian studied Computer Science at the University of Melbourne and got an MBA and Master of International Affairs from Columbia Business School.

Leng Leng THANG is a socio-cultural anthropologist with research interests on ageing, intergenerational approaches and relationships, family and migration. Her recent publications include caregiver issues in Singapore, Japanese retiring overseas and grandparenting in Singapore. She is co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Intergenerational Relationships (Taylor and Francis, USA). She is currently associate professor and head of the Department of Japanese Studies, as well as co-Director of the Next Age Institute, National University of Singapore. She is also active in community services, serving as President of Fei Yue Family Service Centre and council member of Singapore Gerontological Society among others.

Kai Wen WONG is a Senior Planner with the Urban Redevelopment Authority where he specialises in strategic land use planning, public engagement, and research, including the review of Singapore’s long term Concept Plan. He currently leads research into the relationships between ageing, health and the built environment at the Strategic Research department. Kai Wen graduated from the National University of Singapore with a Bachelor of Social Sciences (First Class Honours) in Geography in 2004, and received a Master in Public Administration from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in 2013.

Loong Mun WONG is the Chief, Care Integration and Operations Division and Customer Experience Department at the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC). Dr Wong holds a doctorate in social psychology. Under his portfolio, he oversees the referral management team, case management team and customer experience team. He has been in the aged care field for more than 19 years, having set up this new national referral management program in 2001, previously known as Integrated Care Services (ICS).

PHOTO ESSAY
https://nus.edu/3jbhLKg

‘Moved to Care’ explores the connections between migration and ageing through twelve pictures taken by researchers from the Transnational Relations, Ageing and Care Ethics (TRACE) project during their fieldwork within and outside of Singapore.  Four groups of people are featured in the pictures: i) Older Singaporean residents and their relations with foreign domestic workers;  ii) Older migrants in Singapore who are ageing alongside older Singaporean residents; iii) Younger Singaporeans who have returned from abroad to care for their ageing loved ones; iv) Older Singaporean migrants who are ageing abroad. 

ARI ASIA TRENDS 2020 SERIES

ASIA TRENDS is an ARI flagship public outreach event. This annual series of public lectures showcases the work of ARI’s research clusters, highlights the relevance of ARI’s research to Singapore, and relates Singapore to the rest of Asia in terms of significant trends in the region. Asia Trends provides an opportunity for ARI to connect with the larger Singapore community through sharing and interacting with public sector institutions, civil society organizations, businesses, universities and colleges, and members of the public. Among the cutting-edge themes and trends examined in the past are “China’s Religious Renaissance,” “The Cost of Care,” “Perspectives on Marital Dissolution: Divorce Biographies in Singapore,” “Creating Centralities” and “What is Sinophone World Literature?: China, Southeast Asia, and the Global 60s”. Each ARI research cluster hosts a talk, during which usually an overseas speaker, who is a prominent researcher or scholar, is invited to examine an emergent trend in that research field; a Singapore-based researcher then provides comments on local development with regard to the trend in question. Past seminars have witnessed interesting interaction between speakers and commentators and lively audience participation in the discussions.

REGISTRATION

Registration is closed, and instructions on how to participate in this webinar has been sent out to registered attendees. Please write to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg, if you would like to attend the webinar.