Overseas Placement Summary Report 3/6/2019- 16/8/2019

Name: Hau Angel Program of Study: Master of Social Work Placement Agency: Yee Hong Centre for Geriatric Care, , Date of submission: 28/9/2019 Introduction of the Placement Agency and Setting Yee Hong Centre is a non-profit senior care organization located in Toronto, Canada. Toronto is the largest city of Canada. It has an estimated population of over 2.8 million in 2016, which makes it the 4th most populous city in North America and the most populous Great Lakes city. Toronto, which is located on Lake , is the most populous city in Canada and the provincial capital of Ontario.

Toronto is a multicultural city that contains different ethnicity such as Little India, Greektown, Corso Italia, Chinatown and . Foreign-born people account for nearly half of the population of Toronto. According to 2016 Census, Canadians of Chinese descent make up about five percent of the Canadian population (about 1.76 million people). The Chinese Canadian community is the largest ethnic group of Asian Canadians, consisting approximately 40% of the Asian Canadian population.

Recognizing the need to care about the new Chinese immigrants to Canada, Yee Hong Centre was set up to provide services to serve Chinese community that helped them to improve well-being. Moreover, with witnessing the increase of mandarin-speaking individuals, Yee Hong has also been providing culturally appropriate social services to these needy as well. It delivers high-quality, culturally appropriate services to Chinese and other ethnic seniors since 1994.

Yee Hong Centre is an outstanding elderly agency providing continuum care services, ranging from home care services to Day care programme to cater different needs of service target. To be specific, it operates 805 long-term care home beds, a wide range of community support services as well as serving over 15,000 individuals across the Greater Toronto Area. To date, Yee Hong Centre remains the largest non-profit nursing home in the country and includes a full continuum of care community and supportive housing services including Aw Chan Kam Chee Evergreen Manor.

By placing in Day Care Program of Yee Hong, I am lucky to learn different assessment tools (Geriatric Depression Scale- Short-form and Mini-mental State Examination) to view the mental and psychological status of the elderly, operate group and programme for older elders with physical concerns and elders with Dementia respectively. In addition, I have engaged in different kinds of day programs organized and went for other agency visits to maximize my learnings about local community services. All these are valuable experiences and inspiration on offering person-centered care services for the needy.

Brief account of the work assignments For my block placement in Yee Hong Centre, I was stationed at Day Care Program in McNicoll Centre mainly. In order to maximize my learning, I worked in both Adult Day Program (ADP) and Special Day Program (SDP) which targeted elders with poor physical conditions and stroke as well as individuals with moderate to severe Dementia respectively.

The basic assignments for me include intake, assessments, group and programme. Since I was involved in both ADP and SDP, I was required to learn to conduct both sets of assessment- Geriatric Depression Scale- Short-form (GDS-SF) and Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE). Concerning assessments, I learned how to conduct them by firstly observing the process of my supervisor to carry them out. Next, I was given time to study and prepare the items for interviews. After that, I was live-supervised by my supervisor on conducting the interviews to ensure that I was on the right track. Eventually, after being told on remainders on how to carry out better interviews, I was required to finish all of them by myself.

On the first 2-3 weeks, I was asked to observe the characteristics and needs of clients in Day Program so as to devise my Group and Program. I was given freedom to design my Group and Program, as long as meeting the need for my service target. Group, with about 6 sessions was expected to start first while Program could be organized later. All of the required work assignments were being discussed and contracted at the beginning of the placement so as to make it clear on the quantity of work assignments required for me to accomplish as a whole.

Since this is my second placement and I want to broaden my horizon, I stepped out for more other learnings beyond the required work assignments. For this, I was so thankful to be encouraged and supported by my supervisor. She even helped to connect some other centres for external visits as well as giving me information whenever I sought for recommendations. It was out of my imagination that my overseas placement to be enriched by different kinds of activities and trainings during my 3-month long in Toronto. The following listed all my work done for overseas placement in Yee Hong Centre.

1. Intakes Altogether, 5 case intakes have been reached in which 4 of them were demonstration by my supervisor on how to conduct intakes while 1 of them was being live-supervised by her on an assigned case.

2. Assessments (MMSE & GDS) In total, there were 31 MMSE and 42 GDS being reached out eventually.

3. Group (ADP) A Reminiscence Group was conducted with 7 members from ADP during July and August, 2019 for 6 sessions (1 hour per session). Members were brought together to share about their unique experiences in three main topics. In addition, positive psychology component was added into one of the group sessions. After all, members were rewarded for a Group photo, a souvenir as well as a certificate at the last session of the Group. Regarding the intervention, members showed positive changes in three group goals pre-set in accordance with data collected via questionnaires.

4. Program (SDP) Sensory Stimulation was chosen to be carried out 2 times, for different groups of elders having either mild group or moderate to severe Dementia in SDP. It was run at the beginning of August. Nearly 20 members were involved in both sessions, with duration of 1 hour each session. Members showed positive attitude towards the Program which aimed to (1) stimulate sensations for elderly with Dementia and (2) To facilitate cognitive functioning of participants.

5. Assist in different programs When it comes to my daily job, I approached clients through helping out in different activities and programs organized by both ADP and SDP. Examples include outing social activities (e.g. drinking tea, having Taiwanese meals together), Dragon Boat Festival celebration (joint-program) with both ADP and SDP clients, summer theme joint-program, as well as regular activities like making handcrafted products, exercises and playing card games. In addition, I have been assisting in different duties like transporting clients to outdoor venue, facilitating clients into different activities that they interested in like Chinese card game. Furthermore, I was involved in delivery of meals during lunch hour most of the time.

6. Training Courses At the first day of my placement, an orientation session has been conducted by Yee Hong Centre for students to know more about history, background information and service provision of Yee Hong. Besides, there were various trainings which broadened our horizons on elderly services. Examples are Play Intervention for Dementia (PID) and Virtual Reality. Moreover, Training on Responsive Behaviour was completed in which 4 consecutive weeks have been spent on learning how to deal with responsive behavior of seniors with Dementia.

7. Agency/ Site Visits Concerning other sites visits, I have been to Chinese Family Services of Ontario, Evergreen Brick Works, Toronto University (Master of Social Work Faculty) and the Hospital for Sick Children on External Visit Day. In order to broaden my horizon on learning about mainstream services and different focus in service provision run by other Yee Hong branch, I was recommended to reach out more sites visits by my supervisor. For some mainstream agencies, I have visited Alzheimer’s Society, Woodgreen Adult Day Program and Chartwell. For other site visits, PID was observed in Finch. In addition, Day Program in Markham, tour visit in Yee Hong Garden Terrance and Seneca Tower have also been explored.

Reflection on professional and personal growth gained from this placement This is an interesting, inspiring and challenging placement experience to me since it is the first time for me to work in elderly setting. Everything is new and fresh to me and I was enriched to provide professional elderly services in these 3-months. Although it was not easy to finish all the written assignments within the placement period, it was still a treasurable learning journey to train me to become a persistent person and build up a good habit of making wise use of time. I was benefitted by gaining professional insights on elderly services and personal development individually.

Professional knowledge on service provision was acquired through orientation, different trainings and especially observable learnings from assisting different day programs.

Regarding the 3 main points that have been emphasized in the Orientation, Yee Hong adopted the Continuum of Care Model, offered linguistically and culturally Appropriate Services as well as supported Positive Ageing. All these are professional service provision for a comprehensive consideration on the varieties of needs and multi-cultural issue of different service targets to make the elderly service in Yee Hong to be outstanding and popular in the Chinese community.

Next, different trainings equipped me with professional knowledge on Play intervention for Dementia (PID), Virtual Reality and using other models to deal with people with Dementia through different trainings arranged. Regarding Play Intervention for Dementia (PID), the most impressive thing to be remembered is the principle “to kill the game before it dies”. It requires creativity of the worker on the provided materials, which aimed to train different things for the elderly like concentration, muscle contraction, and sensory stimulation. Then, for Virtual Reality, there was a real demonstration on how to set up apparatus and devices for VR to be put into practice for the elderly. Moreover, I am lucky to be arranged for the training on Responsive Behaviour of people with Dementia in which analysis and interventions were discussed in which many creative ideas that could actually be tried out when handling cases with Dementia. All these provided me very treasurable learning on the professional social service in elderly setting.

Last, with observable learnings did I really learn a lot, especially from assisting outing activities as well as regular programs in Day Program. For instance, I learnt about safety operation for transferring seniors with physically disability by bringing them to outdoor activity. Moreover, to avoid choking, food was cut into smaller pieces. The monitor of people with Dementia was required so as to avoid the chance for them to run away.

Considering all the above, professional requirements have been achieved to a great extent.

Last but not least, for my personal growth, I was abled to practice my mandarin as some of the service target speak mandarin when conducting assessment. Besides, thanks to my supervisor that encouraged me to be honest to my personal feelings that sometimes we need to say “no” when we have uncomfortable feeling. Moreover, we should beware of our emotional management that sometimes we have to “control” ourselves when encountering unfavourable conditions by clients. More importantly, self-care is always a significant part for every worker that we should also care about ourselves and learn to relax and relieve our emotions.

Apart from the above, I learned to use Google Map and cooked more often by myself. Also, I am grateful to meet new friends and worked with a group of nice colleagues. I am happy to know about myself about enjoying exercises and going to natural environment to relieve pressure.

To conclude, I am satisfied and grateful to have this overseas placement that enrichs my experience in elderly services as a whole.