show respect for the elderly and revere your God…”
History and Founder
Brief History of the Establishment of All Saints Home
In 1981 Bethel Presbyterian Church established a preaching station at the Chapel. It grew to become a separate congregation in 1990, and subsequently an independent church in 1995. It was given permission to temporary use the Chapel for Sunday Services. All Saints Memorial Chapel has significantly contributed to community social welfare. The ancillary hall was converted into a 30-bed nursing home called All Saints Home in 1986 to serve the old and sick. It was well received by the public and by the Ministry of Health (MOH). In 1999, MOH proposed that we build a modern 179-bed Nursing Home at Tampines Street 44 to replace the Home in Hougang. The building and equipment cost amount to $9.9 million. The new Home at Tampines was officially opened by the Minister For National Development, Mr. Mah Bow Tan on November 4, 2001. On January 20, 2000, we submitted an application to the URA to build five blocks of 2-storey columbarium on the site of the old Home at Hougang. This was turned down by the URA on the grounds that the site had been rezoned as a place of worship in 1998. Subsequent appeals were all unsuccessful. Consequently, we decided to submit plans to rebuild the Hougang Home. Praise God, in September 10, 2001 and January 15, 2002, MOH and URA approved the plans. All Saints Home (Hougang) was completed in July 2004. The 3-storey Nursing Home has 144 beds. The Basement includes a Memorial Hall with four chambers totalling 9050 niches. The building and equipment cost amount to $7.5 million. It is a double blessing that the Home and the Columbarium extension could be built together to serve the public. President S R Nathan unveiled the memorial plaque on the March 11, 2005. For more details, please refer to http://www.asmc.org.sg/asmc_history.htmlReverend Lee Huai Kwang (7.4.1918 – 25.11.2005)
Rev. Lee Huai Kwang was born of a poor family in Jin Sha Village, near Shantou, in southern China. He became a preacher at Zion Church in Shantou after graduating from Barbour College in 1938. He married Miss Chan Cheng Leong in 1939 and came to Singapore with his family in 1947. He was first assigned by the Presbyterian Synod to serve as preacher at Holy Light Church in Johore Bahru. In 1950 he became the preacher at Bethel Presbyterian Church in Singapore. He was ordained in 1971 and retired as Senior Minister in 1991. However, he continued to serve Bethel and beyond until he was called home to eternal rest. In 1951 God provided the opportunity for Rev. Lee to be principal of Min Sin School and still serve in the Church. At the time Bethel was unable to support its preacher. In 1973 Rev. Lee gave up the principal position in Min Sin School to concentrate fully in church work. During his 55 years of service at Bethel, 23 years in a honorary capacity, the church grew from a Teochew congregation with less than 20 families to its present three congregations worshipping also in Mandarin and English. Rev. Lee valued Christian discipleship. In those days when Christian teach materials were scarce, he wrote and compiled teaching materials to benefit Bethel members. These were published in 8 volumes. He was caring and dedicated to church members and was well loved by them. Rev. Lee played a pivotal role in turning around the fledgling Li Sun High School (set up in 1965 by the Synod) into the present-day Presbyterian High School. In 1976, against all odds, he founded All Saints Memorial Chapel (ASMC) with support from Bethel and some other churches, pioneering the practice of Christian cremation in Singapore. In 1987 he founded All Saints Home at Poh Huat Road in response to the increasing need to help the aged sick. A new Home in Tampines in 2001, with subsidy from the Ministry of Health, and the redevelopment of the Poh Huat Road Home in 2005, affirmed his foresight. In his years of service to God, Rev. Lee demonstrated vision, compassion and determination in leading Bethel and in responding to the changing needs of Singapore’s Christian community and beyond. He displayed an indefatigable spirit, tenacity and an ability to inspire, persuade and generate support for his ideas and to raise the necessary funds. This enabled him to achieve significantly in his calling as pastor as well as in his social and community service. In 2002 he was awarded the Public Service Star (BBM) by the Singapore Government in recognition of his contributions to society. Praise be to God. Amen. Easter 2009
OUR VISION
To be a shining testimony of God's great love and compassion in eldercareOUR MISSION
We provide quality care, bring joy and comfort, and honour the dignity of residents in a caring Christian environment.Corporate Profile
All Saints Home was founded in 1986 by the late Reverend Lee Huai Kwang, who saw a growing need for nursing care in Singapore. Eager to help the elderly, Reverend Lee established a 30-bed home at Poh Huat Road. Since then, All Saints Home has grown steadily with capacity expansion and new facilities. Today, with four homes strategically located in different parts of Singapore, and a total bed capacity of 734 beds, we provide comprehensive and professional care services that are extended to elderly of all backgrounds.
Our services include residential, respite and day care, with care plans that are customised to meet the needs of each resident or client. We will soon include home-based care to provide clients with a complete range of care services in the comfort of their homes. Under our Silver Lifestyle Club umbrella, we also provide community rehabilitation, maintenance day care, dementia day care, centre-based nursing and home care services.
Message from Chairman
All Saints Home was established in 1986 when All Saints Memorial Chapel (ASMC) and the founding churches, Bethel Presbyterian Church, St. Andrew’s Cathedral, Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Synod in Singapore came together to set up the first 30-bed home at Poh Huat Road. Our vision is to be a shining testimony of God’s great love and compassion in eldercare with the mission to provide quality care, bring joy and comfort and honour the dignity of our elderly residents regardless of race, religion and social status.
Over the past 35 years, by the grace of God, we have grown to our current capacity of over 700 beds across four Centres located in Hougang, Tampines, Yishun, and Jurong East. In addition to nursing home services, we also operate three senior care centres at our Tampines Centre, Yishun Central and Yishun Fern Grove under the Silver Lifestyle Club (SLC) branding.
Year 2020 has been an unexpected challenge for everyone. COVID-19 posed an unprecedented threat and crisis to All Saints Home in its 35 years of history as the elderly we serve make up the demographic that is the most vulnerable to the virus. Many of the elderly in All Saints Home are frail and weak with chronic illnesses. We have seen that many of the COVID-19 deaths overseas come from clusters that formed in nursing homes. When one of our staff was tested positive with COVID-19 in April 2020, we were extremely worried. We thank God that the virus did not spread to others and our staff has since recovered.
All Saints Home is committed to doing our utmost to protect our residents against COVID-19. We have implemented strict safe management measures to reduce risk to our residents in accordance with advisories from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Agency for Integrated Care (AIC). For example, to comply with safe distancing requirements, we had to house most of our care staff off-site. All Saints Home managed to put our care staff in centralised serviced apartments with dedicated transportation to and from their respective centres. This was to minimise their exposure to the community and shield them from potential community transmission. All these measures were meant to protect our residents by reducing the risk of bringing the virus into our Centres.
COVID-19 has greatly disrupted our operations. We had to shut down our senior care centre services at our SLCs during the Circuit Breaker period. This was challenging for All Saints Home in several ways. Firstly, our staff had to find alternative ways to care for our existing clients even though the SLCs were not in operation. We did our best to continue provide social support to our clients via exercise sessions on Zoom and daily telephone calls. Secondly, the closure of our SLCs meant reduced income for the Home. Compounded with increased expenses to implement safe management measures, the Home faced extraordinary expenses last year.
As a whole, 2020 was an extremely difficult year for All Saints Home. We would not have been able to overcome all these challenges without the strong support from the Government, volunteers, donors and sponsors.
I would like to thank MOH and AIC for their support which ranged from timely advisories and guidelines to ensuring the availability of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), as well as subsidising our off-site accommodation for our care staff. The support from MOH and AIC has been invaluable in keeping our staff and residents safe in the fight against the COVID-19 virus as well as sustaining our operations.
The implementation of strict safe management measures affected the emotional well-being of the elderly residents under our care. To protect our residents, we had to impose visitation restrictions in accordance with guidelines from MOH and AIC. One of the ways that we tried to mitigate the impact on our residents was by providing telephone and video calls with their loved ones. We thank AIC and the North East Community Development Council for organising the donations of tablets and smartphones that allowed our residents to make such video calls.
Big scale physical celebrations and outings had to be cancelled in 2020. All Saints Home was blessed to have dedicated volunteers who organised online events for our residents. For example, ACE Seniors, together with volunteers from both the public and private sectors, brought virtual National Day joy to our residents with performances, food, care packs and appreciation cards. Other volunteers such as the All Saints Saturday Volunteers (ASSV) also engaged our residents in live online sessions. This not only promoted community cohesion, but also maintained the emotional well-being of our residents.
I would also like to thank the Chaplaincy team and volunteers from ASMC, who continued to minister to our Christian residents with the e-Chapel service videos and provided continual spiritual support to our Christian residents.
Besides the residents, our care staff faced movement restrictions that were stricter than that of the general public and I would like to acknowledge the sacrifices they made. I would like to thank all the staff for putting the extra effort and hard work in ensuring that our residents are well taken care of, and that we could continue to operate effectively during this difficult period.
All Saints Home is a not-for-profit charitable organisation. We rely on public donations to support our programmes and activities for the residents and clients. As COVID-19 has affected the livelihood and income of large portions of the public, it was inevitable that there would be a drop in donations. We are therefore grateful to our faithful donors for their continued support when we had to pivot from our usual physical fundraising events to digital events. We also received an outpouring of support in the form of donations-in-kind, ranging from PPE to daily essentials for our residents and staff as well as festive goodies to raise the morale of our staff during these difficult times.
Despite the difficulties we faced in 2020, I am pleased to report that All Saints Home managed to proceed with several major upgrading works. We continued with our efforts to make our centres more dementia-friendly, and several parts of this major project have been completed or are underway. Our Yishun Centre, for example, has had all the signages replaced with dementia-friendly designs to help make it easier for residents with dementia to find their way. Progress is being made at other centres.
We also managed to proceed with our staff skill upgrading, with staff undergoing training under the Wellness Support Programme conducted by the AIC. This programme would enable our staff to not only conduct but also design meaningful activities for our residents and clients, thereby enhancing the care that we provide.
As 2020 has come to a close, we pray that the new year 2021 will bring with it the end of this pandemic with the rolling out of vaccination programmes worldwide. We also pray for God’s mercy and protection and grant us the strength and resources to overcome this difficult time together in the new year.
Mr Ng Keok Boon
Chairman
Stepped down April 2021
Message from CEO
2020 has been an extraordinary year in more ways than one. When I took over as Chief Executive Officer of All Saints Home in January 2020, the world only had an inkling of just how far reaching the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic would be. I am proud to acknowledge how the staff of All Saints Home have banded together to tackle a situation that has never been faced on such a scale before. The resilience and unity displayed by the All Saints Home staff over the past year has been especially moving in light of the personal sacrifices and difficulties they faced.
Operationally, we had to make many changes. As early as January, we implemented infection control measures such as temperature screening and the wearing of surgical masks in the wards as a precaution. We are thankful that such prudence in choosing to err on the side of caution paid off. One of our staff tested positive for COVID-19 in April 2020, but the infection did not spread and our residents remained safe.
Our staff had to quickly adapt to the ever-changing situation, and it is heartening to report that they faced the difficulties with equanimity. For example, our Nursing staff implemented major changes to their rostering to be able to accommodate the strict split zones and bore with longer shifts in full Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Our Rehabilitation staff had to redesign their activities for small groups and individual sessions while ensuring that every resident was able to participate to maintain their functional levels. Our Operations and Facilities staff stepped up on their cleaning of our premises and our Medical Social Workers have had to assist with visitation scheduling in addition to their regular workload. Our Human Resource team went into overdrive, helping our care staff cope with the restrictions they faced. Other corporate functions also had to make changes to their processes and adapt to working from home.
To abide by safe distancing measures, our staff have also had to sacrifice much social interaction both at work and during their personal leisure time. Safe distancing measures at our premises meant that all meals had to be staggered and taken spaced at least 1-metre apart, minimising socialising. Our staff also avoided going out unnecessarily during their free time.
A large percentage of our staff come from countries such as Malaysia, Philippines, Myanmar, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka and they, especially, have made many personal sacrifices to contribute to the safety of our residents. Home leave was cancelled, meaning many of them have not seen their families in over a year. Some have missed seeing their young children growing and reaching developmental milestones, while others were unable to say goodbye to aged parents before they passed on. All Saints Home recognises the emotional hardship that this has caused, and commends our staff for their resilience and determination to continue serving the residents and clients in our care.
Nevertheless, as part of the All Saints Home family, we did our best to support one another through this crisis. Care packs containing toiletries, snacks and other essentials were provided to our care staff. In addition, they received information care packs with tips on mental wellness, exercises, entertainment, food apps and helplines. Hopefully, these helped them tide over their homebound time. Socially distanced celebrations were held in the last quarter of 2020 for Nurses’ Day and Christmas. Townhalls as well as smaller engagement sessions with the staff were held at various points of the year, providing them with platforms to ask questions and clarify doubts. Since our staff were unable to go on home leave, we ran an initiative which let our staff cook dishes from their national cuisines to share with their colleagues for a taste of home. Meanwhile, we expanded our kitchen menu with special treats to cheer up our staff. Drawing on the universal power of music, we launched an original All Saints Home song titled ‘United We Serve’ to rally our staff and boost their spirits.
Our gratitude goes out to our staff for their strength and fortitude during these challenging times and enabling us to continue providing quality care, bringing joy and comfort, and honouring the dignity of residents in a caring Christian environment.
We are also thankful to the Government for their strong support. The Job Support Scheme and other COVID-19 related funding support have bolstered our finances significantly this year, while the timely and comprehensive advisories and guidelines from the Ministry of Health (MOH) and Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) helped steer the sector with decisive measures to meet the everchanging pandemic situation in Singapore.
Our thanks also go out to the next-of-kin of our residents for their support and kind understanding. Their cooperation with the visitation restrictions and infection control measures have helped us to continue operating smoothly. The words of affirmation and praise for our staff have also gone a long way to boosting and raising their morale.
Our faithful donors have also continued to support our fundraising events, which had to go digital in 2020. We are also grateful for the generous donations-in-kind of PPE, food and essentials.
To the volunteers whom we know are eager to resume your volunteering sessions, thank you for keeping our residents in your hearts. Your digital engagement sessions are new to our residents, but nevertheless bring them a lot of joy. We are looking forward to the day when we will be able to welcome you back.
As we settle into the new normal and move onwards towards the future, we can do so with confidence, knowing that our Almighty God will continue to watch over us and bless the fruits of our labour. May all glory and honour be to Him!
Mr Samuel Tan
Chief Executive OfficerBoard of Directors
-
Lee Shee Koeng
Chairman -
Richard Tan Chuan Lye
Vice-Chairman
-
Loh Li Cheng
Honorary Secretary -
Tan Lin Teck
Honorary Treasurer -
Pauline Ang Hooi Yeong
Vice-Honorary Treasurer
-
Chew Yuen Long
Board Director -
Lim Kim Choon
Board Director -
Rev David Wong
Board Director
-
Rev Wong Shyun Jye
Board Director -
Dr Yeap Eng Hooi
Board Director
Management Team
- Samuel Tan Chief Executive Officer
- Ko Hui Yun Chief Operating Officer
- Chan Foong Yee Head, Human Resource
- Surita Cheng Head, Centre Administration
- Shruthi John Head, Rehabilitation
- Kan Mei Yan Head, Finance
- John Lim Head, Centre Operations and Facilities & Logistics
- Jonathan Zhang Head, Silver Lifestyle Club
- Seng Chee Keong Head, Procurement
- Alaris Wong Head, Corporate & Community Affairs
- Albert Yong Head, Information Technology
- Rev Daniel Teh Lead Chaplain
Corporate Milestones
Official Opening Ceremony of All Saints Home Jurong East, 20 May 2016
All Saints Home Yishun - Maintenance Day Care, 1 Dec 2015
All Saints Home Yishun - Day Rehabilitation, 23 Oct 2015
All Saints Home Jurong East Began Operation, 15 Sep 2015.
All Saints Home Jurong East Projected Official Opening, 20 May 2016
All Saints Home Yishun Began Operation, 23 Mar 2015.
All Saints Home Yishun Official Opening, 7 Nov 2015
Awarded government tender to operate two new Nursing Homes in Yishun and Jurong East
Official Opening Ceremony of All Saints Home Hougang
Group photo at All Saints Home Hougang Opening
Speech by Reverend Lee During Hougang’s Groundbreaking Ceremony
Rebuilding of All Saints Home Hougang
Official Opening Ceremony of All Saints Home Tampines
Plaque commemorating the opening of All Saints Home Tampines
Prayer of Blessing for All Saints Home Tampines Groundbreaking
180-bedded Nursing Home Groundbreaking Ceremony at Tampines Street 44
0.4 hectare of land at Tampines Street 44 was offered by the government to build a nursing home
Reverend Lee Huai Kwang founded 30-bedded Nursing Home in Poh Huat Road
