Care homes don’t have to feel like prisons, says Hong Kong boss of Chinese facility that wants to tap into growing demand from city’s ageing population
CP Homes chief executive Samuel Cheung brings private hospital know-how to development in Huizhou that is attracting interest from Hongkongers
Early one weekday morning a tour group of Hongkongers in their mid-50s and 60s gathered in Lo Wu – their destination, a care home in the mainland city of Huizhou.
The trip had been arranged by CP Homes, a United States company, which partnered with Country Garden, a Chinese property developer, to build an 18-floor facility at a housing estate in Huidong county, where one-third of the estate’s homeowners are from Hong Kong.
The US firm opened the care centre in September last year, despite the lukewarm response of Hong Kong residents to the government’s Pilot Residential Care Services Scheme in Guangdong, which encourages the city’s senior citizens to consider moving into care homes across the border.
Of the two centres involved, in Shenzhen and Zhaoqing, only 180 of the 37,000 Hong Kong seniors waiting for a subsidised place in a residential care home have opted to go over the past four years.
However, Samuel Cheung Man-king the CP Homes chief executive and a former general manager of St Paul’s Hospital in Hong Kong, is confident the company can capture a share of the growing care home market.
