The Jockey Club CADENZA Hub adopts a user-focused case management approach to promote primary health and social care. It provides a wide spectrum of wellness, lifestyle modification, health maintenance courses, as well as on-site co-location services tailored for individual users. The Hub is operating in a self-financing mode.

Services
A team of multi-disciplinary health care professionals provide a wide range of care services, including comprehensive health assessment, physiotherapy and rehabilitation training, cognitive assessment, Traditional Chinese Medicine clinics, ophthalmology service, weight management and other primary care services. At the same time, the Hub also provided day care services.

Jockey Club CADENZA Hub Website

The Jockey Club Charles Kao Brain Health Services, co-funded by the Trust and The Charles K Kao Foundation, was a pioneering outreach service to raise public awareness of dementia, provide screening for early-stage dementia patients, and make referrals for them to access community care. It was a quadripartite partnership of CADENZA: A Jockey Club Initiative for Seniors, St. James' Settlement, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and The Charles K Kao Foundation.

During the three-year project period, a 16-tonne promotional truck, accommodating nurses and social workers with health screening equipment and stationing for two months in each of the 18 districts, provided preliminary tests for the elderly in the hope of diagnosing early-stage dementia patients and offering follow-up or referral services. The project comprised five components – consultation, public talks, centre-based workshops, follow-up service for patients and carers, and public education. Those who were found to have possible memory problems were referred to government clinics, private medical practitioners and self-financing service providers. Carers were also given dementia care tips and education kits.

The project conducted dementia screening for nearly 6,500 elderly people, and rendered different follow-up services to more than 6,000 dementia elders and their caregivers. The project also provided information on dementia to more than 75,000 elderly and members of general public through talks, workshops and other public education activities, so as to enhance the public's awareness and knowledge regarding dementia.

Promotional truck stations in different districts

CADENZA Community Project: Linkages was a community project launched by CADENZA: A Jockey Club Initiative for Seniors and the Aberdeen Kai-Fong Welfare Association. To promote intergeneration communication, cooperation and exchange, the three-year project comprises four parts, namely Community Education, Intergenerational Learning, Intergenerational Volunteer Development and Promoting Cultural Heritage Continuity.

• Community Education:
• Large-scale public education programmes, practice workshops, and media coverage were utilised to promote the importance of intergeneration communication and relationship.
• Intergenerational Learning:
• Learning activities and cross-generation art and culture programmes were conducted in order to make way for purposeful interaction between two generations. 
• Intergenerational Volunteer Development:
• Volunteer teams were set up according to the strengths of different generations, which included an IT mentor team, an elderly care companion team and a child care and education team to foster the spirit of mutual care and assistance among different generations.
•  Promoting Cultural Heritage Continuity:
• A series of traditional Chinese festive activities, video clip competition, and sharing of fishermen's culture and traditional cuisines were organised to instill traditional wisdom into the younger participants and let older people understand the culture of the young generation. 

Intergenerational Volunteer Development

Promoting Cultural Heritage Continuity

Cherish Our Life: Enhancing Psychological Well-being of Elders was a two-year elderly suicide prevention project for older people living alone in the Wong Tai Sin District under the CADENZA: A Jockey Club Initiative for Seniors. The purpose was to reduce the elderly's depressive symptoms through early detection, support service, treatment programme and referrals.

Under the programme, elders assessed to be depression prone and have depressive symptoms were invited to join a preventive treatment programme. The participants took six weekly training sessions to improve their self-efficacy and problem-solving skills so as to reduce their depressive symptoms, and two follow-up sessions to consolidate knowledge and to assess programme effectiveness. For those participants who show no progress or little improvement after the training, clinical psychologist provided further counselling services to them.

Besides, those without obvious signs of depression in the screening were encouraged to join various activities or volunteer services organised by Sik Sik Yuen. The purpose was to help them develop a social network and lead a positive life to prevent the development of depressive symptoms. For those who had detectable signs of depression, they were referred to Integrated Community Centre for Mental Wellness of the Social Welfare Department and the Elderly Suicide Prevention Service of the Hospital Authority for follow-up treatment to prevent suicide.

In two years, the project conducted screening for more than 1,400 elderly people and supported 150 elderly people with depressive symptoms.

To minimise the occurrence of elder abuse and provide timely support to related parties, CADENZA: A Jockey Club Initiative for Seniors partnered with Hong Kong Christian Services (HKCS) to launch a three-year community project entitled Elder at PEACE (Project to End Abuse with Collaborative Efforts) in Kwai Tsing District.

The project set up a telephone help line for victims of elder abuse and related parties to provide one-stop assistance and counselling services. The public and practitioners could also seek advice or refer cases if needed. In addition, training was provided for practitioners to enhance their techniques when handling such cases and a series of community education programmes were organised to raise public awareness towards the issue.

In three years, the project supported more than 130 cases and provided 2,500 consultation sessions. In addition, more than 460 professionals and frontline workers participated in the training activities. The project also promoted the message of preventing elder abuse to more than 6,700 members of the public through community education activities.

To response to the retirement wave and to help retirees adapting to their retirement life, the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Christian Service jointly launched a two-year project, CADENZA Community Project: AIMS - Active Interest Mentorship Scheme, funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. By introducing a mentorship intervention model, individuals who will retire soon or have just retired were assisted to develop active interests and participate in interactive and meaningful activities to derive satisfaction and motivation for a healthy and positive retired life. Major components of the project included:

• Senior Mentorship Programme on Active Interest
• This was an intervention programme to engage soon-to-retire people to prepare for retirement. Retired people were recruited as mentors to help soon-to-retire people develop active interests before retirement.
• Professional training and support
• In order to disseminate the key features of this intervention model, HKU conducted lectures and workshops for professionals in the fields of social service and human resources management.
• Public education
• To raise the public's awareness towards the importance of retirement preparedness, a symposium on active interest culture development and "active interests" expos were organised.

In view of the pressing needs of stroke elders as well as providing more care options for the affordable group, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council initiated the Transitional Care for Stroke Patients (TCSP) project, an integrated and multi-dimensional stroke rehabilitation programme with comparatively cost-effective pathway. The programme services included individualised treatment plan sessions with various therapists and group activities that were designed for restoring their memory, speech, cognitive and functional mobility in order to help maximize stroke patients' potential for independent living and prevent readmission.

Programme Characteristics

• Alternate Choice
  Provide more care options for users with access to faster and higher quality rehabilitation services;
• Sharp and Prompt Response
  Arrange intensive and continuous rehabilitation programme in order to maximize the effect of 'Golden Rehabilitation Period';
• Users' Participation
  Patients and family members were involved in setting the care plan; recovery progress were reviewed periodically with scientific data as well as visual evidences;
• Full Spectrum of Services
  Besides putting medical, nursing, allied health and social work professions together, alternate treatment methods like acupuncture and rehabilitation software were integrated into the programme

Elder-Friendly Employment Practice was a four-year project initiated by The Hong Kong Society for the Aged and funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The objective was to provide elder-friendly working environment for retired professionals, which will facilitate them to return to gainful employment, continue to contribute the society and achieve self-actualization.

This project components included the development of a local EFEP framework and a corresponding auditing tool (e.g. flexible working hours, job design, friendly physical environment, supportive policy, etc). In order to establish supportive elderly employment in Hong Kong, the project focused on advocacy work for the Government, enterprises and society in general.

Most of the unplanned re-admission by elderly is caused by inadequate medical management or rehabilitation prior to discharge, social problems, diet management and deterioration of clinical status. In order to assist the discharged elderly, the Salvation Army, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University since 2005 have implemented the Pilot Project for Community Support for Discharged Patients to provide one-stop transitional service for elderly living alone or those with no carers during day time.

In 2008, the Salvation Army, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Hong Kong Polytechnic University collaborated with 7 non-government organization units to initiate the Health-social Partnership Transitional Care Model for Post-discharged Elderly (HSPTCM) under CADENZA community projects in Yau Tsim Mong, Chuk Yuen, Wong Tai Sin, Hunghom and Kowloon City.

The project piloted a 28-day care model for supporting the elderly upon being discharged. The Omaha System, which has been used widely in the United States since 1975, was adopted as the framework for case assessment and intervention. A randomized controlled trial was carried out to examine the effectiveness of health-social partnership transitional care model (HSP-TCM) on supporting discharged elderly.




The project provided health assessment, home safety assessment, medication management, emotional support and other services to more than 550 discharged elders, and trained more than 270 volunteers to provide different support for the project.

Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world. According to Hospital Authority, around 70% of the Hong Kong elders has at least one chronic condition. In view of an ageing population in our society, it is inevitable that an excessive reliance on medical treatment and an immense direct health costs from elder patients would become a social issue. To cope with these threatening challenges, the Salvation Army has promoted the chronic disease self-management programme since 2004, and has actively developed the course into a healthy living action guided and promoted by the elderly.

In 2007, the Salvation Army and Shatin Hospital launched a two-year pilot project in New Territories East aiming at training elders to be lay leaders to promote self-management behaviors among the elderly population. A working team, steered by The Salvation Army and Shatin Hospital, undertook research and organised the Chronic Disease Self-Management Programme (CDSMP), an evidence-based model developed by Dr. Kate Lorig at Stanford University which has already been adopted world-wide.

The project organised near 90 sessions of self-management courses and related activities for 16 elderly service units in two years, attracting more than 1,600 elderly people to participate.