1 At the closing event of the Year of Celebrating Social Service Professionals, Minister for Social and Family Development, Mr Masagos Zulkifli, announced enhancements to capability building initiatives under the Professional Capability Grant. These present new opportunities to attract fresh entrants and better support the professional growth and development of social service professionals to meet evolving social service needs.
2 The Professional Capability Grant, administered by the National Council of Social Service (NCSS), provides funding support to social service agencies (SSAs) to build professional capabilities. It comprises a suite of schemes that aims to attract, develop, and retain social service professionals (see Annex for list of schemes).
Enhancements to Professional Development Schemes
3 The enhancements under the Grant will take effect from April 2026. To better support more in-service social service professionals in their professional pursuits, MSF will increase the tuition sponsorship under the Professional Development Sponsorship, from the current 75% to 100% coverage.
4 We will also expand the Social Service Tribe Study Award criteria which currently supports individuals to acquire full professional qualifications, to include aspiring individuals pursuing associate-level qualifications in our universities, polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education. This will encourage more to join the sector as associate professionals, to work alongside and support full-fledged professionals and serve as an important pipeline to meet the growing demand for social services.
Expanded Support for Leadership Development
5 MSF will also expand funding support for the Foundational Leadership grants beyond middle managers to include both first-time and senior leaders in SSAs. This will enable them to receive funding support for courses under NCSS’s refreshed series of Leadership Milestone Programmes.
6 The series of Leadership Milestone Programmes comprises short courses, where leaders can engage in classroom and peer-facilitated learning to build core leadership competencies. These include developing systemic approaches to problem-solving, fostering innovation and building future-ready organisations that deliver effective and efficient services.
7 Apart from the schemes under the Professional Capability Grant, MSF’s newly established Professional Services Group (PSG) has been working with SSAs to enhance practitioners’ well-being and client outcomes by deepening supervisory competencies and practices. The Supervision Nexus is a dedicated professional network, which has been piloted with a few SSAs and will be progressively rolled out from March 2026.
8 The Supervision Nexus will provide professional leaders with support on supervisory practices, set guidelines on supervision standards and competencies – such as training roadmaps, provide evidence-based tools and resources, and facilitate communities of practice.
9 More details of the support schemes can be found at https://go.gov.sg/pcg.
10 For a glossary of translations, please refer to Annex A - Translation Glossary.