Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
- Thank you for making this conference a huge success.
- Over the past two days, we shared about the importance, challenges, and lessons in building strong and resilient families, across the region.
- We heard from Professor Froma Walsh about how resilience contributes to a family’s ability to thrive in the face of adversity. Ms Kitty Chau shared about the importance of family well-being, and the need to adopt a family-centric approach for better policymaking. These are just a few of the insights from the many illuminating presentations and conversations we have had.
- One common thread that runs through all findings is that better outcomes are achieved when policies and programmes are developed with a family-lens. This allows us to harness the strengths of the most enduring bond in our society the family unit.
- We must work alongside families rather than just provide assistance for them. We must adopt a strengths-based approach to support families, rather than focus on their deficits.
- Allow me to share my reflections on how we can build strong and resilient families in Singapore.
Supporting Families Across Every Stage of Life and Diverse Experiences
4. In Singapore, the Government, families, community partners and corporates work together to nurture a family-friendly environment, to instil family values, and to strengthen familial and community bonds.
- In June this year, over 700,000 participants across Singapore celebrated the importance of family over a month-long National Family Festival organised by the Families for Life Council with the support of more than 200 partners.
5. To truly flourish, families require deliberate and purposeful nurturing, across every stage of life. Families must be built upon strong foundations to help them weather storms that may come their way.
- Through the Journey with You and Bersamamu programmes, newly-wed or soon-to-wed couples are paired with marriage mentors or their solemniser, Kadi or Naib Kadi, who will journey with them as they navigate the transition into married life.
- As couples start their own families and become their children’s anchors, we also support them in their parenthood efforts through parenting programmes and resources.
- One such resource is the “Guidelines on Healthy Family Boundaries” co-developed by MSF with the social sector professionals. The research-backed guidelines provide clarity on appropriate family practices and boundaries for professionals, who engage and coach parents on building healthy relationships with their children and supporting their healthy development.
6. There are families who may face greater challenges or early signs of stress, so we need to provide more targeted support.
- We heard about the implementation of Functional Family Therapy in our work with high-conflict families across child welfare and juvenile justice cases. We harness the families’ strengths and grow their resources, to address challenges and to restore the family unit.
7. When a marriage has broken down irretrievably, we have taken steps to reduce acrimony, assist divorced couples in their healing journey and prioritise the child’s best interest. For parties who continue to face issues post-divorce, we also support them by securing financial assistance and fostering healthy parent-child relationships.
- We are rolling out a new Maintenance Enforcement Process to improve the enforcement of maintenance payments, and help families work towards more sustainable maintenance outcomes.
- We will also be implementing enhancements to the enforcement of child access orders regime. When there is a breach of access arrangement, a slew of measures may be ordered to improve co-parenting relationships and to restore parent-child relationships, including mediation and make-up access.
- These enhancements are aligned with therapeutic justice approaches, which Chief Justice Mr Sundaresh Menon shared earlier today, to promote cooperative solutions that reduce conflict and support well-being of families.
Achieving Outcomes Through Research and Data
8. As we develop efforts to strengthen families, the role of research is front and centre. It informs our work at every stage, from policy design to implementation and evaluation.
- Research allows us to understand whether our approaches, policies, and programmes are working, and where we can do better to deliver impact and improve the outcomes for our families, through their diverse contexts and experiences.
- SUSS, the Singapore University of Social Sciences, is a co-organiser of this conference. This is proof of the benefits we can reap from a strong policy-academia nexus.
9. The five-year evaluation study of the KidSTART programme, which we heard about yesterday, is proof of the value that collaboration can unlock. KidSTART brings partners across early childhood, health and social service sectors to support lower-income families in the early years of parenting and child development.
- The commissioned study found that children enrolled in the KidSTART home visitation programme had improved socio-emotional development outcomes and parent-child interactions.
- These findings affirmed our decision to expand the programme nation-wide to benefit more families.
- It also informed revisions to the service model, including supporting more families earlier from the antenatal stage. We will continue to track the outcomes of families enrolled in KidSTART, to ensure its sustained impact on children and their families.
- KidSTART’s evaluation was possible only because we had good data that allowed us to test our hypothesis and arrive at well-supported conclusions.
10. The importance of data extends beyond research. A robust data culture, where data is systematically collected, readily accessible and used to drive decision making, helps us deliver better outcomes across multiple fronts.
- Data also helps us to better deliver services and programmes to our clients:
- At the client level, when data is shared appropriately, it can improve service experiences, such as by streamlining the number of applications clients have to make. Data can improve the effectiveness of our interventions, for instance, social service professionals have a more holistic view of the client and his family through our OneCV platform, enabling more comprehensive recommendations.
- At the service level, data used for operational analytics can improve and streamline the way we do our work. For example, we have incorporated the use of data analytics to better plan our provision of Early Intervention services.
- Data also plays a part in governance in ensuring good stewardship of funding where we are able to measure the impact of services and interventions and there is a record for posterity.
Collaboration the Key to Amplified Impact
11. I spoke earlier about how academics and community partners have played their part. I would also like to highlight the efforts of social service agencies and practitioners, who leave an indelible mark and impact on the families they work with.
- Today in Singapore, social service practitioners in 47 Family Service Centres nation-wide provide social work intervention to vulnerable families with social and emotional issues, to help them achieve stability, self-reliance, and social mobility.
- Counsellors under the Strengthening Families Programme at Family Service Centres, also known as FAM@FSCs, provide family counselling, helping families understand and work through various family-related issues.
- We heard yesterday about the pivotal efforts of fostering agencies to help children who have experienced abuse or neglect find a safe and loving home.
- On the prevention of family violence, the MSF is collaborating with partners from social services, law enforcement, health and education sectors to develop and implement domestic violence tools and intervention framework.
12. Our efforts are multiplied when different segments of society work closely together. Our progress in tackling domestic violence demonstrates the amplified impact we can achieve when we collaborate. We heard earlier from His Excellency Dato Nazmi Mohamad. He shared with the panel on the importance of engaging families on the ground, because their needs have evolved over time.
13. I believe we can all come together and agree that close collaboration between all segments of society is essential for us to develop better initiatives to strengthen families.
14. As AFC 2024 draws to a close, I hope that the connections formed will be enduring, as it is through dialogue and cooperation that we can continue to build strong and resilient families across Asia.
15. The conference has been testament to this. We have had vibrant and enriching discourse thanks to the diverse contributions from speakers across Asia.
- Thank you, H.E. Dato Seri Setia Awang Haji Nazmi bin Haji Mohamad, H.E. Dato’ Sri Nancy Shukri, and Mr Chua Choon Hwa, and Mrs Jatuporn Rojanaparnich for sharing about the remarkable efforts in Malaysia, Brunei, and Thailand respectively to strengthen and support families.
16. We look forward to the upcoming research collaboration on Understanding the State of ASEAN families. We are confident that we can exchange ideas and apply the learnings in our country’s context to advance the common vision.
17. Let us come alongside each other to build strong and resilient families, whether as a policymaker, academic or practitioner, and most importantly, as a member of our own families and our societies.
18. Let us apply our lessons today into meaningful changes for tomorrow.
19. Thank you.