Debated in Parliament on 16 Oct 2012.
Ms Low Yen Ling asked the Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (a) whether he will provide an update on the new Development Support Programme (DSP) for preschool children with mild speech, language and learning delays; (b) how and when is the DSP to be rolled out; (c) how many learning support educators need to be recruited for this programme; and (d) whether the budget for this programme will be expanded in the next two to five years for national coverage.
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The Development Support Programme (DSP) is a new programme introduced to support children in preschools who have mild learning difficulties, speech and language delays and behavioural concerns. Children are supported by a group of trained Learning Support Educators and, if necessary, therapy intervention.
The programme is being rolled out in phases. In the first phase, which started in May this year, we are piloting the programme in 30 childcare centres and kindergartens. The centres cover a few clusters in Ang Mo Kio-Bishan, Toa Payoh, Kallang-Havelock and Bedok. So far, 170 children have joined the programme. Such a phased approach will enable us to gather learning points and refine the programme before rolling out to other centres.
The centres are currently supported by 12 Learning Support Educators. We aim to train a total of 40 educators within two years. We will ramp up the programme's capacity over the next few years. In total, we expect to spend up to $30 million on DSP over the next five years as we progressively expand the programme nation-wide.
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