Monthly Payout for ComCare Short-to-Medium Term Assistance Recipients

10 Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang asked the Minister for Social and Family Development in each of the past five years (a) how many ComCare Short-to-Medium Term Assistance recipients are first-time applicants; (b) what is the median monthly payout for first-time applicants; (c) what is the median number of months the first-time applicants have received the assistance; and (d) what percentage of first-time applicants have reapplied for assistance within 12 months of receiving ComCare.

The Minister for Social and Family Development (Mr Desmond Lee): Mr Speaker, ComCare is part of the multiple layers of assistance provided by the Government to support low-income individuals and families. Households that require help to tide over a period of financial difficulty are provided with ComCare Short-to-Medium-Term Assistance (SMTA). Depending on the needs of the household, our Social Service Offices (SSOs) may provide financial assistance in cash, help with household and medical bills, and refer them to agencies such as Workforce Singapore for employment assistance or Family Service Centres (FSCs) for further support. As the needs, profile and size of each household is different, the quantum and duration of assistance they require may also vary.

Between 2015 and 2017, the number of households that received SMTA at any point in time was between 14,000 and 16,000 households. We do not have readily available data on how many of these were first-time SMTA applicants. The median monthly assistance quantum that a household on SMTA received was about $400 and the median duration of assistance in a year was about six months. These figures exclude other forms of Government assistance and subsidies that households could be receiving, such as MediFund for medical expenses, subsidised rental housing, financial assistance for school fees or childcare subsidies and so on.

Among households whose SMTA ended in 2016, about 25% households reapplied and received SMTA within 12 months. These families may have faced new challenges or changes in their family, work or health circumstances. We do not have five-year data available.

Beyond these statistics, it is important to understand the challenges families face in overcoming their issues and the support that will help sustain their self-reliance. The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) will continue to study these trends in close partnership with stakeholders in the community, particularly those who are working directly with families in need.

Mr Louis Ng Kok Kwang (Nee Soon): I thank the Minister for the reply. I have two clarifications. First, how can we ensure that we have a social safety trampoline, as Deputy Prime Minister Tharman has suggested, rather than a social safety net? So, how can we reduce this 25% repeat applicants?

The second clarification is whether MSF has studied whether, if we increase the duration of providing support during the first application, it would lead to a reduction in the number of times they will re-apply? Which means, if we help them longer the first time, the chance of them coming back to re-apply for ComCare would be reduced. So, maybe not six months, which is the median; but whether we have studied giving them nine months, and perhaps these applicants will not come back to apply for ComCare again?

Mr Desmond Lee: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for his abiding interest in seeing how we can establish a trampoline as well as a social safety net. A trampoline to help families with the potential to overcome the challenges to be able to stand on their feet and be able to support their own selves, and a safety net to catch those who fall through temporarily or even for a longer duration of time.

The Member may be aware that last year, we announced efforts to develop, all across the island, SG Cares Community Networks. These are networks of social and healthcare agencies within each town. We seek to integrate the support that all these organisations – both Government and people sector – can provide so that we can give more holistic assistance to families, especially those who face complex needs.

We also announced last year our intentions to launch hubs in rental housing estates so that we can bring together the agencies and the Voluntary Welfare Organisations (VWOs) that have been working very intimately and closely with families living in rental housing. As the Member may know, rental housing families tend to face a plethora of complex difficulties. With that integration, coordination and support amongst different agencies, we hope to better able to partner these families, tackle their issues holistically, chronologically, and systematically. Empower them, partner them, and support them. So, that is what we hope to achieve.

As I said earlier in my reply, ComCare is but one of a suite of assistance schemes that help to stabilise a family's needs, and meet their basic needs, whilst working with them to address other upstream issues.

On the Member's second point, I think what he meant was whether we should consider increasing the duration as opposed to what he said, "reducing the duration". Certainly, six months is the median. There are some families whose needs may be more short-term, for example, they may need, say, two to three months of assistance before they transit to a new job which they can secure with or without assistance; or they may require longer-term assistance because they may be undergoing more structural training, for example. So, median is median. There are those who get fewer than six months and those who get longer than six months.

The SSOs, together with our agencies, such as Family Service Centres, would assess the needs of the families holistically, and then make the necessary decisions as to what that appropriate duration would be. But going forward, we need to work together in a more integrated fashion with the community, with our VWO partners and with other Government agencies, so that we provide assistance in a way that empowers, and in a way that supports more effectively.