Adults with Disabilities

Sir, the focus on the disabled or those with special needs in Singapore has grown from strengthen to strengthen. Under the Enabling Masterplan 2012 to 2016 and the one before, support indeed has been enhanced, thanks to the good work of Ministry, NCSS, SG-Enable and the various partners.

As expected, support for the adults, especially those who are moderate to severely disabled, tends to fall behind support for the younger and the milder. As a volunteer activist who helps to build services for the young and older ones, I have observed many challenges in the adult space.

At a macro level, the quality of services is uneven and usually lacks depth and scale. There is the issue of manpower constraint as not many Singaporeans choose to work in jobs that support the more severely disabled. And then, the issue of insufficient funding –funding for most adult programmes is means-tested and not tiered to reflect the higher support needed for those who are more severe. Hence, any qualified provider who chooses to operate for instance, an adult centre, must be prepared to raise funds to cover its expected operating deficits for as long as the programme runs. There needs to be both funding and options such as what announced by MOH just now on home care support packages.

At the family front, parents of adult disabled children are getting on in age themselves and many are in a state of anxiety, helplessness or paralysis regarding the future of their children. It is clear that while the State feels it is doing more, the beneficiaries do not yet feel the same way.

Not many of these ageing parents have clarity of the end-goal for their child's adult life or if they know that how to get there. Some would like the Government and the VWO to take over the entire care but not everyone wishes to abdicate their parental duty. The consistency of engagement and support is not evident during the adult days compared to those in the younger days; yet adulthood is the season that lasts for a good many years beyond childhood and youth.

For this COS, I would like to surface five pointers for Minister to consider:

(1) An update of the Enabling MasterPlan and how this update might be better presented and more accessible to especially stakeholders outside this House;

(2) A specific sharing of the Ministry's plan for the adults with moderate to severe disabilities in view that there are not many options other than day activity centres which are expensive to run and which face serious manpower constraints due to lack of appeal;

(3) Tiered funding for services that support those who are more severe especially for those in DACs, the home based services and residential homes, even if the duration of service is not for full-day attendance;

(4) Structured and stronger family support by having paid and trained Life or Family Coaches from either disability organisations, family service centres or SG Enable to work out with families of such adults what is commonly called "Person-Centred Individual Life Plan" during transition from youth to adult and then on a periodic basis. The Plan can serve as a signpost and roadmap to clarify what the end-goal is; and what services are available and what families themselves can do to get closer to the end-goal. The vision should be a user-friendly plan that maps how families and other stakeholders can work towards such Quality of Life goals like financial well-being, physical fitness, social and community inclusion and continued education and training; and

(5) Finally, I ask for the development and communication of a clear continuum of disabled adult service models from respite service, home-based service to day activity centres to employment and residential homes for those with no family support.