TRAINING FOR NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS

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TRAINING FOR NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANISATIONS: 17.

Miss Penny Low asked the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports in light of the economic downturn and various efforts by agencies like MAS, MOE and SPRING to help defray salaries and training costs of attachments for fresh graduates and professionals in their respective fields, whether the Ministry has any similar schemes and plans to help not-for-profit organisations acquire and train professional workers to run these organisations.

The Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (Dr Vivian Balakrishnan): Mr Speaker, Sir, the current economic downturn has provided both a significant challenge to the non-profit and voluntary welfare organisation sectors as well as a great opportunity. MCYS and the National Council of Social Service (NCSS) have therefore been using this time to step up our efforts to recruit, upgrade and retain talent within the sector. Let me cite a few examples.

NCSS has been running a series of advertisements in the newspapers and also participated in career and job fairs in

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the last few months in order to highlight job opportunities in this sector. MCYS is also working with Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) to increase the number of places available to train social workers and other professionals needed in the social service sector. In order to make this sector more attractive, Members of the House will also recall earlier announcements to introduce accreditation for social work professionals and to improve their working conditions by ensuring that they receive competitive remuneration packages.

There are also a slew of training opportunities in the schemes which we already run, for example, the $45 million allocated to the Voluntary Welfare Organisations and Charities Capabilities Fund. We also have new training initiatives, including an NPO Executive Director Mentoring Programme, and an experiential Social Leadership Singapore programme aimed at developing key leadership in this sector.

In addition, there are also initiatives such as the Sabbatical Leave Scheme and the Professional Leadership and Development Scheme as well as the NCSS Scholar Management Programme which will facilitate scholars' transition into the social service sector. This programme provides mentoring for personal and professional growth. NCSS is also exploring providing a coaching programme for new entrants to help them settle into this sector.

MCYS and NCSS have been working with the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) in order to provide enhanced funding support for social service training under the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR). SPUR basically leverages on the extensive Continuing Education and Training (CET) system and includes Workforce Skills Qualifications (WSQ) courses for the Community and Social Service sector. Currently, we have

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21 courses available within this sector which will enjoy support from SPUR, and that means people who go through these courses will enjoy a subsidy of 90% of the course fees. In addition, if the applicants are employed by the non-profit sector or the voluntary welfare organisations, SPUR also pays a training allowance of up to $1,000 a month. In other words, they can come onto the employee list of the non-profit sector, be sent for training, enjoy 90% subsidy and receive a training allowance. This is indeed a generous package which we hope will enable us to attract more people to go into the social service sector, especially at a time like this.

As far as social workers are concerned, there is a shortfall of 100 a year. I also want to highlight that we will need about 2,500 new workers in the social service sector over the next five years. Similarly, in the childcare sector, you will know that we are expanding the number of childcare centres. We need 2,000 new people to come into this sector over the next five years. So, the bottomline is that jobs are available, training capacity is available, subsidies are available for training, and training allowances are available. So especially for people, like the PMETs who are unemployed or retrenched, this is a great opportunity to consider a career in the social service sector.

3.00 pm

Mr Speaker: Order. End of Question time.

[ Pursuant to Standing Order No. 22(3), Written Answers to Question Nos. 18, 20-21, 23-25, 28-36, 40-42 and 44-46 on the Order Paper are reproduced in the Appendix*. Question Nos. 19, 22, 26-27, 37-39 and 43 have been postponed to the sitting of Parliament on 24th March 2009. ]

*Cols. 3447-3480.