Improving Support for Survivors of Domestic and Sexual Violence

Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development what is the current strategy or practice in the social work and social services sector on the provision of therapy or support for families that have gone through family violence to aid in their psychological and emotional recovery from the trauma.

Ms Carrie Tan asked the Minister for Social and Family Development (a) what is the current capability and capacity of the social services system in providing support to survivors of sexual violence in their mental, psychological and emotional recovery; and (b) whether the Ministry is currently working or plans to work with educational institutions to ensure a trauma-informed and survivor-centric approach to post-violence care and support for youths.

Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for Social and Family Development whether the Ministry will consider, on its own or in partnership with other organisations, implementing programmes to encourage a more proactive approach towards preventing family violence which goes beyond contacting the Ministry’s family violence hotline to also include bystander intervention training and strategies to empower all members of the public.

Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim asked the Minister for Social and Family Development with regard to male survivors of family or sexual violence, particularly those who have experienced such violence when they are young, what are the avenues of help available to these survivors in terms of counselling and support, awareness of legal rights and access to peer support groups.

MSF works closely with the community-based Family Violence Specialist Centres (FVSCs) and PAVE’s Integrated Services for Individual and Family Protection Specialist Centre (ISIFPSC) to provide support to all persons, regardless of gender, who experience any form of violence.

The support provided includes safety planning to reduce the risk of violence recurring, facilitating alternative safe accommodation for survivors away from perpetrators, supporting survivors through the Personal Protection Order (PPO) application process, referring them to legal aid where necessary, making Police reports of violent or sexual offences committed against them, and working with them and their families, where applicable, on their longer-term needs.

Beyond addressing immediate safety risks, FVSCs and PAVE also provide counselling to survivors to address their psycho-social needs such as trauma arising from the violence. There are also various support and therapeutic groups run by the community, including FVSCs and PAVE, for survivors of family or sexual violence to speak about their experiences in a safe and supportive environment. Survivors who have mental health or trauma needs are also able to seek services from mental health professionals of restructured hospitals, including those with specialised trauma clinics.

MSF will continue strengthening interventions for families who have experienced trauma due to family violence. As recommended by the multi-stakeholder Taskforce on Family Violence, we will cater for a forensic-trained psychologist at each of the FVSCs and PAVE, to enable them to work more effectively with survivors and perpetrators. This includes addressing trauma and mental health concerns, providing assessment and intervention to identify and address risk factors and needs relevant to the perpetrators’ abusive behaviour and working with the social workers to engage in safety planning for survivors.

Taken together, the assessment, intervention and safety planning can help to reduce the risk of repeated violence.

MSF is also working with social service agencies to develop and implement a common assessment and intervention framework. This framework will enable frontline professionals to better identify family violence cases, make timely referrals and facilitate discussion of cases across agencies where relevant and support the agencies in managing the risks and addressing needs of both survivors and perpetrators.

There are currently three FVSCs, namely Care Corner Project StART FVSC, TRANS SAFE FVSC and PAVE ISIFPSC. Two of these – Care Corner Project StART and PAVE – are already able to provide comprehensive social and emotional support, including counselling and other interventions, for survivors of all forms of intra- and extra-familial violence, including sexual violence. These two centres also have the capability and capacity to provide social and emotional support to persons who experience sexual violence or harassment in their workplace. [Please refer to “Clarification by Minister of State for Social and Family Development”, Official Report, 12 January 2022, Vol 95, Issue No 46, Correction by Written Statement section.]

This support complements the efforts by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), which provides advice to persons who experience harassment at work, such as how to tap on workplaces’ internal grievance handling and workplace harassment management procedures. TAFEP will also require employers to provide an investigation report of the workplace harassment complaint in accordance with the Tripartite Advisory on Managing Workplace Harassment and take clear steps to prevent and manage workplace harassment in future.

Care Corner Project StART and PAVE are the only two agencies in Singapore with the capability and capacity to provide comprehensive support for survivors of sexual violence. MSF is working with the third FVSC, TRANS SAFE, to enhance its capability and capacity to provide similar comprehensive support to survivors of sexual harassment and violence in the second half of the year.

Children and young persons who experience family or sexual violence are supported by MSF’s Child Protective Service (CPS) or the community-based Child Protection Specialist Centres (CPSCs), depending on the severity of the presenting risks. Management and staff at the various touch points like preschools, schools, healthcare institutions and social service agencies are also trained to identify and report child abuse to CPS.

As part of the intervention, CPS and the CPSCs work with families to put in place safety plans to minimise the recurrence of harm. MSF and the CPSCs also have psychologists who are trained to provide evidence-based trauma interventions for children and their caregivers to treat their trauma and abuse-related psychological issues. Where relevant, MSF and our community partners may work with the schools and educational institutions, including their counsellors and student welfare officers, to ensure that school-going children receive the post-violence care and support that they need. MSF also works with community agencies that provide psychological services, including training for the agencies’ staff, to identify trauma needs in order to help the children and families heal from the trauma caused by abuse.

While post-violence support is important for survivors to heal and recover, MSF recognises that upstream, preventive efforts are equally important.

MSF has invested in public education efforts for many years. The Break the Silence public education campaign was launched in 2016 and was just refreshed in November last year to increase awareness of the different types of abuse, such as sexual abuse, psychological and emotional abuse, and to encourage bystanders, survivors and perpetrators to seek help. This is in line with the recommendations of the Taskforce on Family Violence. MSF has also started promoting the use of the “Signal for Help”, which is a hand signal that can be used by survivors to discreetly indicate that they need help. To further amplify this signal, MSF has incorporated it into its Break the Silence campaign logo.

On working with community partners to detect violence, MSF actively seeks out and collaborates with community partners and organisations to strengthen community detection of violence and refer persons experiencing violence to available support. In 2021, MSF worked with 16 organisations across the people, public and private sectors, including educational institutions, grassroots and religious organisations to provide Family Violence Awareness Training to over 1,100 staff and volunteers. MSF will continue expanding our outreach to more organisations, particularly partners that are likely to have direct contact with survivors of family violence or with groups that are at a higher risk of family and sexual violence. We welcome more organisations to step forward and partner us.

On preventive efforts, MSF works closely with our partners on various fronts. For instance, MSF has enhanced the marriage preparation programme to include topics such as adverse childhood experiences and its impact on relationships, with the aim of increasing couples’ awareness of family violence and building healthy relationship skills. Additionally, MSF has developed a set of respectful relationship narratives, which is aligned with ongoing efforts by the Government and community partners to educate youths on healthy and respectful relationships, with the aim of inculcating positive behaviours from a young age.

MSF is currently working with partners to align and incorporate these narratives into programmes. These will complement ongoing efforts by MOE to equip students with age-appropriate knowledge and skills to maintain healthy and respectful relationships, including through the Character and Citizenship Education curriculum.

I thank the Minister of State for her response. I am very heartened to know of the various efforts to increase capacity. What I would like to understand is, does MSF currently know what is the practitioner-to-survivor ratio in terms of the capacity for rehabilitative and therapeutic care?

And is there a concrete manpower plan to enhance the sector? The Minister of State and I have been doing our own engagements with social workers, and we are familiar that they are already using trauma-informed approaches but I think the practical consideration is that when social workers are overwhelmed, counsellors are overwhelmed, therapists are overwhelmed, they are not in the best space to hold space for their clients. So, we need to ensure that there is adequate resourcing and adequate manpower. So, is there any commitment that within the next three to five years, what numbers would we be training and putting in additional capacity in the system for the therapeutic care for survivors of violence?

I thank the Member for her supplementary question. MSF regularly and closely monitors the capacity of our FVSCs as well as PAVE to ensure that they are adequately resourced to be able to provide effective support to clients who need their help.

The FVSCs regularly report case numbers to MSF. We monitor to ensure that they are able to manage their case load and when necessary, MSF is prepared to increase the capacity of the FVSCs as a whole, to be able to effectively help survivors and perpetrators of family violence.

We had also recently announced that MSF will cater for a forensic-trained psychologist at each of the FVSCs to enable them to work more effectively with survivors and perpetrators.

I also want to add that there are, apart from the FVSCs, other social service agencies who also form their own therapeutic groups and support groups. And these support groups complement very well the Government's efforts to ensure that there is support for survivors and perpetrators alike.

If the Member would like further clarifications around the ratios, I would be happy to share them with her offline or to present them at the next available Sitting.