Restructuring in Provision of Social Services

Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap asked the Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports if he will provide an update on the status of the restructuring of social services to be more ground-up and centered on voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs).

Mr Chan Chun Sing: At the Opening of Parliament last October, I shared that MCYS will play a more active role in strengthening the social service sector and developing its capability to meet future demands and needs. This includes developing our social service professionals, providing more resources for key services and raising productivity. We will take a public-private-people partnership approach to help the sector become more effective and efficient, while maintaining its "personal" touch.

I am pleased to report that we have since taken concrete steps in this direction. Allow me to recap a few recent examples.

For the community eldercare sector, to encourage "ageing in place", we have extended subsidies for day care centres and home help services from the 30th income percentile to the 50th income percentile and raised Government's share of funding for Seniors Activity Centres from 50% to 60%. These changes were effected on 1 October 2011 and 1 January 2012 respectively. Going forward, we are significantly increasing the number and range of programmes to better support the seniors in our community.

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For the children and youth sector, we have introduced licensing for residential care facilities. To equip the sector to deliver better outcomes for these children, we introduced a common assessment tool to guide care planning, resilience building programmes as well as a training competency framework. We will also be investing $13 million over the next four years to pilot small group homes that can provide more intensive and specialised services for children with higher level needs.

We have also made progress with the Family Service Centres (FSCs). Last week, I announced a series of new initiatives to build up the sector. These include providing more resources to FSCs and enhancing the capability of their staff to bring about more effective family services. We will also fund the development of more FSCs to enhance the accessibility of FSC services to Singaporeans in need.

On manpower development, the National Council of Social Service launched the Social Service Talent Development scheme in October 2011 to provide structured career development for social service professionals with leadership potential.

There is still a lot of work to be done to strengthen the social sector as well as to better serve specific groups of vulnerable Singaporeans. We will share these initiatives in due course when they are ready.

Mr Muhamad Faisal Bin Abdul Manap (Aljunied): I would like to thank the Minister for his comprehensive response. I would just like to ask: since the objective is to be more ground-up and pro-centric in terms of the social sector, has the Ministry actively engaged the VWOs maybe to get their feedback or conduct certain appraisal to find out whether this objective has been achieved or they are on the right path?

Mr Chan Chun Sing: I thank the hon Member for the question. Yes, indeed, we actively and regularly consult all VWOs and other stakeholders in the sector. For example, in the development of the plans for the Family Service Centres, we have formed various committees that have participants from the practitioners in the sector to give us feedback. In the childcare sector, likewise, we regularly meet with the providers of the services to hear their feedback and their ideas because we believe that for the Ministry to implement effective policies, we need the 3P partnership that comprises the Government, which is the public, the private sector and the people sector. It is only when all stakeholders work closely together will we come up with better ideas to better care for the Singaporeans that are with us.