Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) whether the Ministry keeps track of how many adult persons with special needs or persons with disability are financially dependent on their parents who have retired; (b) what are the current programmes and schemes available to help adult persons with special needs or disabilities to secure their own livelihood for their financial self sufficiency, in particular those who are high functioning; and (c) what is the success rate of these programmes and schemes.
Answer:
MSF does not track whether adult persons with disabilities are financially dependent on parents who have retired. Based on the Comprehensive Labour Force Survey (CLFS), the average resident employment rate for persons with disabilities aged 15 to 64 has increased steadily from 28.2% in the period of 2018-20191 when data on persons with disabilities was first collected, to 31.4% in 2021-2022.
2. SG Enable offers a wide variety of support for persons with disabilities seeking employment. Under the Open Door Programme (ODP), persons with disabilities receive up to one year of job matching, and customised employment support from trained job coaches. Grants under the ODP provide subsidies for persons with disabilities to attend training courses by Enabling Academy – SG Enable’s disability learning hub – as well as for workshops that prepare employers and their employees without disabilities to interact with, hire, integrate and retain employees with disabilities in their organisation. Between 2020 and 2022, SG Enable and its partners placed an average of 500 persons with disabilities into jobs each year.
3. Persons with disabilities can also take up job and training opportunities created under the customised Place-and-Train and Attachand-Train programmes. More than 380 job and training opportunities have been filled under these two programmes since they were introduced in 2021.
4. The Government also provides employers with wage support through the Enabling Employment Credit (EEC). The EEC provides up to 20% wage support for employees with disabilities earning below $4,000 per month, capped at $400. More support is provided to encourage the hiring of persons with disabilities who are long-term unemployed and are more likely to be financially reliant on their families. Employers who hire persons with disabilities who have not been working for at least six months will receive an additional 20% of wage offsets, capped at $400 per month per employee, for the first nine months. In 2022, close to 6,600 organisations received the EEC and collectively employed more than 10,000 employees with disabilities, including close to 2,000 who had not been in work for at least 6 months. The Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) also provides additional support to lower-income workers, including persons with disabilities, by supplementing their income and CPF savings.
5. Building an inclusive workplace requires a whole-of-society effort. As part of the Enabling Masterplan 2030, we encourage more employers to provide suitable employment opportunities for persons with disabilities. Later this year, the first Enabling Business Hub (EBH) will be launched to bring jobs and employment support closer to where persons with disabilities live. The EBH will provide more customised skills training and job coaching to help persons with disabilities remain in their jobs, and also open up opportunities in new sectors such as logistics. We encourage partners across the private, people and public sectors to join in our efforts to achieve the aspirational target to raise the employment rate of persons with disabilities to 40% by 2030.