Professional Services Support for Social Service Organisations
Ministry of Social and Family DevelopmentSpeakers
Summary
This question concerns the distribution of social service sector employees across direct service and back-office functions and the goals of the Community Capability Trust in strengthening professional capabilities. Ms Carrie Tan inquired about workforce statistics, to which Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli B M M responded that 60% of employees provide direct services while 40% manage corporate functions. The Minister stated that no fixed targets are set for staff distribution given differing agency needs, but highlighted existing support like the People Practice Consultancy and Transformation Support Scheme. These initiatives, alongside the VWOs-Charities Capability Fund, aim to help social service agencies diagnose improvements and expand their corporate functions, including volunteer management and communications. Minister Masagos Zulkifli B M M added that the Community Capability Trust will launch in FY2022 to further drive organisational excellence through digitalisation, research, and evaluation support.
Transcript
137 Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) what is the current percentage distribution of employees in the social service sector across the (i) social work function (ii) back-office function (such as human resource, administrative and finance) (iii) volunteer management function and (iv) communications and/or fundraising function; and (b) whether there is a target or goals that the Community Capability Trust intends to achieve in terms of enabling non-social work professional functions in social service agencies to be beefed up and if so, what are these targets.
Mr Masagos Zulkifli B M M: Based on MSF's Manpower and Salary Survey (MPSS) which collects manpower and salary data from Social Service Agencies (SSAs), there were around 16,500 social service sector employees in 2019. About 60% of these employees were in positions that provide direct social services, including social workers, therapists, counsellors and care staff, among others. Social workers comprised 14% of all social service sector employees, or around one-quarter of employees who provide direct social services.
The remaining 40% of social service sector employees were employed in functions that do not deliver direct social services, such as human resource, administration and finance, communications, fundraising, volunteer management and others.
As SSAs have different organisational structures and requirements, we do not set targets on the distribution or size of staff in corporate functions. Instead, we have been partnering SSAs to strengthen their capabilities, which includes corporate functions and have introduced various initiatives to do so. This includes schemes to help SSAs diagnose areas for improvement and implement solutions such as the People Practice Consultancy (PPC) and Organisation Development Journey (ODJ), and schemes to help SSAs hire to expand their corporate functions and implement capability-building projects such as the Enhanced Volunteer Manager Funding Scheme (EVMFS) and Transformation Support Scheme (TSS). Apart from these schemes, SSAs can tap various other grants under the VWOs-Charities Capability Fund (VCF).
The Community Capability Trust (CCT) will open for applications in FY2022 and will build upon our existing efforts to further support SSAs to achieve organisational excellence. This includes areas such as volunteer management, digitalisation, evaluation and research, among others.