Why Sunheal
Our home is designed to feel calm, respectful and non-institutional. Residents are cared for with privacy, patience and compassion.
The worry
You have seen the places where a row of residents faces a television from breakfast until dinner, and nobody speaks to them.
How we handle it
Light morning exercise at 10am, tea at 3pm, and an afternoon activity at 5pm — tai chi, carrom, board games, cards, singing, mahjong or colouring. Residents who prefer to sit quietly may do so — but by choice, not because nobody came.
The worry
Many centres are fully staffed at 10am when you tour, and run on one person after midnight.
How we handle it
Sunheal is staffed 24 hours a day, with a staff-to-resident ratio of at night. Families tell us their preferred hospital at check-in. In an emergency we stabilise the resident, call an ambulance, and contact the next of kin straight away.
The worry
A quoted monthly fee, and then charges for nappies, for feeds, for every small thing, arriving one at a time.
How we handle it
The monthly fee covers 24-hour nursing care and monitoring, doctor consultations, four meals a day, laundry and housekeeping, and daily activities. Physiotherapy, medical consumables and residents' personal items are charged separately, and the deposit is refundable.
The worry
The smell at the door of some centres tells you everything. Others are spotless on tour day and nowhere near it on a Wednesday afternoon.
How we handle it
Families are welcome to visit — please make an appointment first. Open the bathroom door, look in the rooms, and ask us anything.
The worry
Bathed with the door open. Spoken about in the third person while she sits there. Called ‘auntie’ by someone who has not learned her name.
How we handle it
Curtains drawn before bathing, every time. Residents addressed by the name they prefer, in the language they are most comfortable in. Nobody discussed as though they cannot hear — because very often they can.
The worry
The guilt that sits underneath every one of these conversations, and that nobody says out loud on a tour.
How we handle it
A daughter working full time, sleeping in three-hour stretches and lifting a parent she cannot safely lift is not providing safer care than a staffed centre. Choosing help is not abandonment. Most families tell us the relationship improves once they can go back to being a daughter rather than a nurse.
In depth
Care centres sit on a spectrum. At one end, a boarding house with kind staff; at the other, a small hospital.
We sit deliberately towards the clinical end, without looking like one.
That means a centre founded and led by a doctor and a nurse; a doctor who visits ; 24-hour nursing care and monitoring; and a team of registered nurses, caregivers and a physiotherapist. When something changes, somebody qualified notices early.
The default in many centres is maintenance — keep the resident clean, fed and comfortable, and accept the decline. We start from the opposite assumption: where recovery is possible, we work towards it.
Our physiotherapist works on site, and sessions are arranged around each resident's recovery. We recommend three sessions a week. Physiotherapy is charged separately from the monthly fee.
Dementia care is mostly not medical. It is about the same faces, the same order of the day, and a calm routine that does not change.
We have a Memorandum of Understanding with HungKuang University, Taiwan, on dementia care. Every resident is assessed before admission, and we will tell you honestly if a behaviour is beyond what we can manage safely.
Being small is the whole strategy. A large facility has to standardise to function; a small one can remember that your father takes his coffee at 4pm and gets anxious when the television is loud.
Residents bring their own personal items, and the place should feel like a house where care happens, not a ward.
Food is the part of institutional care that families underestimate and residents care most about. Residents have four meals a day: breakfast and tea are prepared in-house, and lunch and dinner are catered daily from our central kitchen.
A sample day: toast and egg for breakfast; herbal steamed chicken, braised potato with minced meat and stir-fried vegetables for lunch; mee hoon soup with yong tau foo for dinner.
This is the one that cannot be audited, and the one that matters most. It shows up in small things: knocking before entering, drawing the curtain, waiting instead of hurrying, sitting down to talk instead of standing over someone.
Honestly
Every centre claims to be caring. Here is what is actually distinguishable, and what is not.
If any of that makes us the wrong fit, we would far rather you found out now than three weeks after your mother moved in.
Take this with you
Including us. If a centre cannot answer these clearly, that is your answer.
Visit two or three centres in one afternoon, including ours. The differences become obvious very quickly when you see them side by side.
1. Enquire› 2. Visit› 3. Quotation› 4. Deposit› 5. Check-in
