NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment plans to provide grant-in-aid to healthcare agencies under the Atal Vayo Abhyuday Yojana for providing training to create a pool of trained caregivers to provide bedside assistance for needy elderly.
The ministry aims to run eight such projects and reach out to 9,600 beneficiaries. The implementing agency for this will be National Institute of Social Defence (NISD).
According to the 2011 Census, the population of senior citizens in India is 10.38 crore. More than 70 per cent of them live in rural areas.
Over 5 per cent of the senior citizens suffers from some sort of disabilities related to old age. Projections indicate that the number of elderly population will increase to around 173 million by 2026.
The programmes will cover creation of a pool of trained personnel who can run the senior citizen homes as per minimum standards and training to the staff of the project of senior citizens homes, training and capacity building and creation of skilled human resource on geriatric care and bedside assistance — three -month courses, six-month courses and one-year diploma courses, and awareness to the caregivers at home through online programmes
NISD will report the performance of the tasks/programmes to the ministry on half-yearly basis in September and March every year.
The type of awareness programmes will include seminars,workshops, conferences at the regional level on the issues relating to senior citizens through reputed organisations, special campaigns to spread awareness on mental health issues, conducting awareness campaigns on different aspects among others.