Prof Kenneth Poon, Research Taskforce Chairman and Vice Chairman of CFL
Rev Fr Ambrose Vaz, Spiritual Director of Catholic Family Life
Ms Martha Suen, Chairman of CFL Lumens Trust Board of Trustees
Good morning, everyone.
- Thank you for having me with you this morning. Coming together, you will learn from one another and enrich your experiences and your knowledge to help families in Singapore.
- It's my pleasure to be here with you and it's heartening to see many of you from different sectors - social service practitioners, community leaders, religious leaders, coming together and we have a very united reason why we are there, and that is to build strong families.
- There's been very good work done by the Catholic Family Life, and this is the area of research and how we can strengthen families, as well as provide resources in order to make them strong. The findings on the key factors will be an important contribution in forming what I call the body of knowledge that in Singapore, we take from others, but we really ought to be contributing to this body of knowledge.
- We ought to be thought leaders so that we can develop family-centered practices within our context and for the value systems that are offered to us. I know that many of these sciences come from the West because their academia is fantastic, but for all it’s worth, while their research is really sound, the value systems can be quite different. Therefore, I hope studies like this can contribute to our body of knowledge.
- What does MSF do? Firstly, MSF is centered around the conviction that family is the bedrock of our society. This, I hope, resonates with all of you. In fact, when I mentioned this to many of my counterparts around the Asian region as well as Middle East, we resonate with that too.
- But what we say and what we do is quite different. For example, I remember one family complaint to me that when they do counseling for a child, they put the family away because it's the right of the child to have access to therapy, and families or parents cannot interfere. How we do it is that families can come together in a therapy or counseling session, so that the healing and the support that the child may get, is through the family.
- One crucial aspect of families is family resilience, because life is full of challenges; it is inevitable. There's no such thing as a perfect family. In fact, imperfection is what we all want to accept, but there is something called a strong family, a resilient family, that can recover not only from their adversity, but they can come out stronger. And in fact, be more resourceful and understand that during that process, they can manage stressful events and forge stronger relationships. So not all adversities are bad, just like ourselves as individuals, you can come out stronger when you learn from failures. Therefore, nurturing strong and resilient families is one main aim of the work we do in MSF.
- And I believe we are seeing some success based on the report that we have published in the family Trends report where we highlighted the importance of family resilience. I'd like to share that 86% of families reported moderate to high family resilience scores. 25% of all families reported high Family Resilience scores. it's encouraging that families in Singapore are, indeed, strong and resilient and capable of overcoming challenges together.
- But more can be done, because we must continue to nurture strong families and not take it for granted. As we face different challenges, like what's happening around the world in the last few days, where it's going to come here to affect economies and families. Therefore, I hope to get your support to always be family-centric.
- Family centricity is one of the most important things that we have to think around everything we do, particularly in MSF. It means that when we look at whatever problems we have, we must have a family lens on. Even in divorce. When we look at families divorce, we look at it as a broken family. But the Japanese have a different view. In their art, kintsugi, which is the broken ceramic that you can glue back together with gold, and then it becomes a work of art. So not everything broken is bad, because broken things can be fixed together beautifully, too. Even broken families. What is this gold that puts it together? I think it is our faith. We can still put it together, not just functioning, but also make it beautiful. And therefore, MSF is working to be even more family oriented in offering assistance to families facing challenges.
- Our Family Service Centers in the community provide support that families need dealing with. And with even more complicated and complex challenges coming in the weeks and months to come.
- Second, what we have seen from the many approaches everyone has taken, there is one common thread, and that is to adopt a strengths-based approach.
- For example, Singapore Safe and Strong Families programme adopts the Family Strengths and Needs Assessment tool to ensure children remain safe in their families, and professionals use this Family Strengths and Needs Assessment tool, to identify and leverage on family strength, to preserve the care of the children, and ultimately, to reunify the children with their families.
- Lastly, to ensure we do it better than before, is to engage families proactively and upstream. It does not mean solving problems that doesn't happen is preventing it from happening. For example, we have KidSTART to ensure that we can identify vulnerable families early, and equip them even from the point of pregnancy.
- In addition, at our Committee of Supply, we are considering many ways in which we can deliver services holistically in a family-centric manner. At the end of the day, what we want to achieve is stability for all families, self-reliance and ultimately, the ability to achieve social mobility: the three S's of what MSF stands for.
- As we take the family focused lens, it is important that we form this body of knowledge, which is why the research study conducted by Catholic Family Life is very invaluable, because, together with other studies, will tell us what is the state of our families, what we must do, what paradigms we must shift, and, more importantly, how we can learn from one another, regardless of race, language or religion.
- Let's continue to build on this body of knowledge, collaborate, contribute and be richer from it. Beyond this, we are also heartened to witness how Catholic Family Life have come alongside us in partnering delivery services for families. For example, they work very closely with the Family for Life Council for the marriage preparation course, and events such as the National Family Festival, and also the Catholic Family Life's Worldwide Marriage Encounter 45th Anniversary Mass. These are all things that all of us must do individually, but together, it adds up.
- Every religious community in Singapore is a minority. There are none which has a majority, more than 50%. But if you add up all the religious communities who have the same importance they put to family values, we become the majority.
- Let's work together. Let's cultivate an environment where families feel supported through evidence to research and produce unity that we have on these family values. And together, the government, the community, and families is how we build a society of strong families, because that's the foundation of our nation. Thank you.