Thursday 4 December 2014

New programme equips community with skills to detect abuse cases

By Kelly Ng, TODAY, 3 Dec 2014

In the past, Movement of the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore (MINDS) worker Bernadette Maria Dass identified possible cases of abuse among her clients primarily through physical observation.

“If a bubbly person has a sudden change in personality, I’d flag these cases to social workers. However, not all these turn out to be abuse cases, whereas it is also hard to determine if the introverted ones are victims of abuse,” said the senior training officer, who has been with MINDS for more than 20 years.



After attending a training session yesterday conducted by Care Corner Project START — one of three agencies here that specialise in dealing with family violence — Ms Dass said she is now better able to spot cases of psychological, physical and financial abuse.

The training session she attended yesterday was the fifth of seven for community partners, such as elder care centres and voluntary welfare organisations, under a pilot programme designed to better protect vulnerable adults amid a rising number of elder abuse cases here.

The aim of these training sessions, organised by the Ministry of Social and Family Development and the three family violence specialist centres, is to improve the community partners’ ability to detect cases of abuse and neglect among vulnerable adults.

The training sessions, each lasting three hours, comprise lectures and role plays. A checklist of questions to help detect cases of suspected elder abuse has also been given to the participants.

“With the checklist, we know what kind of questions to ask and it may help in earlier detection. It is also a useful tool for our less experienced colleagues,” said Ms Dass.

The first five sessions, which were held in Bedok, Ang Mo Kio and Clementi, have reached out to about 250 community partners from 80 agencies. The ministry aims to train 400 community partners by mid-next year.

Speaking to reporters after observing the training session yesterday, Social and Family Development Minister Chan Chun Sing said the community plays a critical role as the “eyes and ears on the ground” in detecting abuse cases early.

“They can always be the first line of detection for any vulnerable cases that might require our attention, which is why we want to equip our community partners with the skill sets ... to help detect and refer some of these cases to us, so that we can do the necessary intervention,” said Mr Chan.

“If we just depend on the professional social workers, that is going to be a finite group of about 200 to 300 people ... But if we can mobilise the community and grassroots volunteers with the same language and the same checklist, then we can potentially have more than 1,000 across Singapore helping to detect some of these cases,” he added.

In addition to building the community’s capability to detect such cases, the ministry will also look at offering increased support for caregivers in families with vulnerable adults. In October, it also announced a plan to introduce a new law by the end of next year, which will allow the state to intervene and protect vulnerable adults.







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