Raising Awareness amongst Parents on Youth Mental Health

1 Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development whether there are efforts to work with other Ministries on youth mental health awareness amongst parents and on equipping parents with mental health awareness and response skills to better support children and youths in the environment of their own homes.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social and Family Development (Mr Eric Chua) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): Mr Speaker, parents play an essential role in their children's mental health and well-being. Youth mental health and well-being is an important issue, and there has been a concerted effort between Ministries, agencies and community partners to promote and support youth mental health awareness, including amongst parents.

The Health Promotion Board or HPB conducts mental health education programmes for parents with pre-school and Primary school-going children, to equip them with the knowledge and skills to develop and strengthen their children’s mental well-being, social and emotional intelligence, and resilience. Through these programmes, parents learn to better communicate with their children and to manage their children’s emotions.

MOE also provides practical tips and resources to parents through platforms such as Parent Kit, Schoolbag articles, "Ask Me Anything About …" Facebook Live sessions and through their "Parenting with You" Instagram account. These resources support parents in identifying signs and sources of stress in their children, building resilience in their children and taking care of their children’s mental well-being. For students-at-risk, schools and Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) provide parents with timely updates on their children’s state of mental health and work with them to ensure care and support is provided where needed.

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges and highlighted the importance of strengthening the mental health and well-being of our youth. To help parents better support their children, Families for Life (FFL) launched the #FFLShareTheCare online video series during the circuit breaker period. Experts such as Dr Daniel Fung, Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), and Mr Arthur Ling, Deputy Executive Director of Fei Yue Community Services, were invited to speak on teen behavioural issues, parenting as well as building strong family relationships. These videos have been well-received, with about 2.5 million views to-date.

MSF also offers evidence-based parenting programmes such as the Positive Parenting Programme, or Triple P, that equips parents with simple and practical strategies to build strong, healthy relationships with their child, up to age 16, and confidently manage their child’s behaviour. Currently, Triple P is available via an e-learning platform, Triple P Online (TPOL) or via video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom.

Other digital resources have also been developed to equip parents with the information and tools to support their children’s mental well-being. The Temasek Foundation, with support from the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC), has developed a "My Mental Health" microsite to address mental health challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Another website, Mindline.sg, is a joint initiative by Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT), MSF, National Council of Social Service and IMH. A one-stop repository for resources and tools, Mindline.sg provides support and self-care tools specifically for care-givers.

While these programmes and resources help provide families with education and awareness on youth mental health and mental well-being, some of them may require further support and assistance. Families facing marital and family issues, and/or parenting stress can approach any of our Family Service Centres or FSCs, or the online counselling service set up in April 2020 by MSF with the Community Psychology Hub. In 2020, over 1,200 clients have been supported through the Community Psychology Hub online counselling service.

Apart from these Government-led initiatives, over 1,500 youths, parents, care-givers and individuals from the social sector and mental health professionals came together to form the Youth Mental Well-being Network, to which MOE, MSF and MOH lend support. Members include both individuals and organisations such as Campus PSY, which stands for "Peer Support for Youths", which promotes mental health awareness and peer support amongst youth, and Acceset, which aims to improve the mental well-being of youths through technology and research. Members have been discussing various initiatives and ideas to enhance youth mental well-being, some of which are on equipping parents to better support their children’s mental health. The Network continues to welcome contributions from anyone who would like to join and make an impact in this space.

We will continue to work with anyone and any agency or individuals, who will come together with us, to help parents better support their children’s mental health and well-being.

Mr Speaker: Ms Carrie Tan.

Ms Carrie Tan (Nee Soon): Mr Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary for his reply. I would like to seek clarification on what is the current take-up rate by parents with regard to the Triple P – Positive Parenting Programme in schools. Are there challenges to its roll-out, if any, and whether the Triple P Programme is on track to meet its scaled up targets, if it does have a plan for scaling up?

Mr Eric Chua: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member Ms Carrie Tan, for her questions. I am happy to actually share that to-date, about more than 30,000 parents have benefited from the programmes. And we have some results to show.

Triple P has, in fact, proven to be quite effective. We have parents coming back to tell us that they now have greater parenting competence. They have also experienced less parenting stress, improved emotional states that they experience and also reduced behavioural problems that they find in their children.

So, overall, on a more sustained basis, more specifically, parents have also come back to tell us that about 20% reduction in both their children's problematic behavioural scores have been observed, as well as their own parenting stress scores. And this is taken about three months after they have completed the programme. So, we are happy to share some of these encouraging results.

So, with this result, we hope that more parents could come onboard, join us for these online programmes, invest some of the time and energy, so that they can learn better parenting tips and be onboard with us on the programme.

Ms Carrie Tan: Thank you, Speaker. To add on to my supplementary question, I noted that the current Triple P efforts are quite focused on delivery via digital platforms. Are there any plans by MOE to work with community partners or, perhaps, even PA, to bring some of this awareness or publicity about these programmes into the community, so that parents who may not naturally gravitate towards finding information online also will be accessed, in terms of having this information about the programme reach them.

Mr Eric Chua: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for her additional question. We are now leveraging quite a bit on the online platforms because of the current situation that we are in, because of the pandemic situation that we are in. But we take her suggestion. As much as possible, we will definitely work with community partners to try to proliferate and make this programme, which is a good programme for all parents, myself included. Hopefully, the participation rate can be further boosted over time.