FINANCIAL PROGRAMMES FOR LOW-INCOME SOLE BREADWINNERS

FINANCIAL PROGRAMMES FOR LOW-INCOME SOLE BREADWINNERS: 11.

Ms Cham Hui Fong asked the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports what financial programmes are there to assist low income sole breadwinners to look after their disabled children and elderly parents, as tax relief is of no benefit to them.

The Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports (Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon) (for the Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Government's ComCare social assistance schemes to assist low-income breadwinners are based on Workfare principles, whereby those who are willing to help themselves through work would be encouraged and facilitated to do so. We believe that work is the best form of welfare, and individuals should take responsibility for their own lives.

We subsidise childcare and student care to help low-income parents go out to work. These subsidies were increased under the Workfare package that was introduced last year to help low-wage workers.

In addition, through the many-helping-hands approach, we partner with Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) in the community to ensure that there is a broad range of services available to help low-income families care for their elderly dependants or disabled children, so that they are able to go out to work. For the elderly, the services range from Day Care Services to Home Help Services. For children with disabilities, these include the Early Intervention for Infants and Children Programme, integrated child care programme, special student care and special education schools for children up to 18 years of age. We have also set up the ENABLE fund last year to encourage

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employers to make that first step of employing persons with disabilities.

The Government and the Community Chest help to co-fund these services to ensure that the cost of these services is affordable for low-income Singaporeans. The subsidies that MCYS provides to assist needy Singaporeans, under the ComCare last year, were about $68 million, out of which the subsidies for the elderly were $3.1 million and $4.8 million for the disabled children. The VWOs complement these subsidies with fund-raising efforts to assist needy families, for example, by waiving part or all of the fees.

We also recognise that healthcare costs can be a major expense for those who are caring for the elderly or the disabled. The Government therefore provides significant healthcare subsidies for Singaporeans. Lower-income Singaporeans who cannot afford to pay for their hospital bills despite the Government subsidies, Medisave and MediShield, may also tap on Medifund for additional help.

Low-income sole breadwinners who need more help with their living expenses in caring for their disabled children and elderly parents, can also approach their Community Development Councils for assistance.

In addition, the caregiving needs of low-income families with elderly and disabled dependants will be addressed by the newly formed Ministerial Committee overseeing ageing issues, to be chaired by Minister Lim Boon Heng, and the inter-Ministry efforts on disability issues co-ordinated by MCYS. So I urge Members to give feedback and suggestions for us to consider when we come up with a comprehensive package to solve these two problems.

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Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Jalan Besar): I am often baffled by the numerous financial assistance schemes and different assistance schemes for the low-income families. I wonder if the Ministry can consider doing a more user-centred communication package to help the low income and possibly uneducated families make sense of all the schemes that are available to them, and that might also help the Members in this House.

Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon: Yes, I am sure the suggestion is very useful. I just want to inform the House that we are now trying to develop a package for all the advisors as well as the CCC ComCare helpers, and also to give them some training as well as to share good practices. The package will give them an idea about the three key pillars which we mentioned a few times in this House. You can divide the ComCare help into three big areas. One is self-reliance. Self-reliance includes Workfare. Workfare means anything about job or self-sufficiency which is under this pillar. The second pillar is ComCare Grow. Anything about children, KiFAS and CFAC is under ComCare Grow. And anything about the disabled and elderly is ComCare EnAble. So if you can remember these three big areas, when people come to you, you can just refer to them.

We are also trying to develop a database to see how we can help the CDCs. At the same time, we are also thinking of setting up a hotline. Of course, the number should be repetitive which is easier for the old people to remember. So I think we will look into the mechanism and how to set up this hotline. But we will announce it in a few months' time so that when an old person calls, you will not have an automatic voice answering service. We want to have a personal touch in this area.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo: Sir, to a certain extent, we are all actually suffering from

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information overload. While all the packages that have been outlined are going to be very useful for us over the long term, I am just thinking, in the short term, whether MCYS would consider deploying some officials, whether be they from the social services or MCYS itself, to assist the grassroots leaders and advisors in the comprehension of all these packages so that it helps to facilitate a more speedier approach when it comes to dispensing all these assistance programmes.

Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon: If you read the newspapers a few days ago, all the Mayors had launched this ComCare network. The purpose is to get the Mayors to drive this platform by getting all the local grassroots organisations, for example, RCs, CCCs and VWOs of your area, together with the Advisors, to coordinate and deliver the social services more effectively on the ground. At the same time, we have announced that MCYS has come out with $1 million to train the grassroots leaders and also enable PA to hire a few more staff to help to coordinate this. So I think we need "many helping hands", like we said, and also we hope that all of us could maybe read more and simplify in our own way the key messages we want to know.