Training for Corporate Partners in Family100 Programme

12 Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for Social and Family Development with reference to the Families100 Programme by OCBC, whether the training provided by the Ministry for volunteers from the bank includes identifying and responding to issues relating to mental health, substance misuse, domestic violence and sexual, physical or emotional abuse or neglect.

13 Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for Social and Family Development with reference to the Families100 Programme by OCBC (a) how will the programme be evaluated; and (b) if the evaluation is positive, whether the Ministry will consider expanding the programme to include other population groups and other corporate partners.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social and Family Development (Mr Eric Chua) (for the Minister for Social and Family Development): Mr Speaker, can I have your permission to take Question Nos 12 and 13 in today's Order Paper together, please?

Mr Speaker: Go ahead.

Mr Eric Chua: Sir, the Families100 Programme is a corporate contribution by OCBC for its staff to volunteer as ComLink befrienders and be paired with an MSF Family Coach, to journey with our ComLink families. The objective is to help the ComLink family achieve the three "S" outcomes of Stability, Self-reliance and Social Mobility.

Volunteers are introduced to issues and challenges faced by ComLink families. These include mental health issues, substance misuse and domestic violence or abuse. However, the volunteer befrienders are not expected to provide intervention. Such cases should rightfully be managed by social service or healthcare professionals to whom the families would be referred as needed.

The progress of all 14,000 families with young children in rental housing, including those under the Family100 Programme, will be tracked under ComLink. Hence, there is no need for separate evaluations. We welcome more corporate partners and community groups to volunteer and join us as ComLink befrienders.

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Razwana.

Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, I appreciate the responses from the Ministry and I am glad that we have put in place some sort of framework to train the staff that are handling such matters. I would like to clarify if there is any standard procedure, in terms of how the referral is done by these volunteers to the social service agencies.

Mr Eric Chua: I thank the Member for her supplementary question. When going out and talking to these ComLink families, what we need to remember is that the volunteer befrienders are always paired with a Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) Family Coach, who is a professional in this case.

So, they always go out in pairs, work with these families, talk through their strengths as well as their weaknesses and then, at the end of each session, there will be a debrief and they can look at what are the services, packages, schemes or grants that the families are probably suited and qualify for.

So, it is a considered and paired approach that we are taking. So, the befriender is not one who is left to his or her own devices and he is always benefiting from the help of the MSF Family Coach. I hope that gives some assurance to the Member.

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Razwana.

Assoc Prof Razwana Begum Abdul Rahim: Thank you. I would like to just clarify one more question in terms of the evaluation. I understand that there is no separate evaluation. However, if we are trying to encourage more private sectors to come on board and take up such initiative to help uplift families, would it be better for us to consider evaluating such a programme so that we can showcase the positive outcome so that others can come on board as well?

Mr Eric Chua: I thank the Member for her supplementary question. I think we are aligned in terms of wanting to use some of the outcomes and some of the end goals that we want to reach through ComLink and to showcase to more corporates. But bear in mind that we are now at the infancy stage of ComLink rollout. We started the pilots in 2019 in four towns. We ramped it up in 2021 across the whole of Singapore. So, in many ComLink towns today, we are, in fact, in our infancy.

But in time to come, we hope to be able to show some of these, not just outcomes, because in terms of outcomes of achieving stability, self-reliance and social mobility, some of these indicators will take some time for us to bear fruit.

So, we do want to also look at some of the throughput and output indicators and, eventually, hopefully, have some good outcome indications to show for it.

So, we are aligned in the sense that we want to show some of this progress and some of these achievements along the way to more corporates and to more volunteers so that they can all step forward.