SINGAPORE – To allow more parents to pick up skills to strengthen their relationships with their children, 10 social service agencies across the island have been appointed as one-stop regional centres for government-funded parenting support programmes.

The process of appointing the Parenting Support Providers began in July and was completed this month.

Parenting Support Providers (PSPs) will work with schools in their allocated regions to continue delivering evidence-based parenting programmes and improve their impact and delivery, said Minister for Social and Family Development Desmond Lee at the Asian Family Conference on Wednesday (Nov 13).

The theme of the one-day conference, held at Mandarin Orchard Singapore hotel, was Parenting for Stronger Families: Challenges and Opportunities.

The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) has been partnering schools to deliver two programmes, Positive Parenting Programme (Triple P) and Signposts, since 2014.

Triple P equips parents with techniques to promote children’s psychological, social and emotional competence.

Signposts, available only in primary schools, helps parents to understand, prevent and manage their child’s difficult behaviour.

Close to 20,000 parents have attended the programmes at 295 schools, said the MSF.

The two programmes are available to parents of Primary 3 and 4 and Secondary 1 and 2 students, who are at key transitional stages and may exhibit behavioural issues new to parents.

Depending on the level or type of programme or individual needs, parents can attend seminars, one-on-one consultation sessions or group sessions. An online option for Triple P is also available.

The PSPs will now also offer follow-up counselling to parents from these programmes and be able to refer them to other services if necessary, added the ministry.

Evaluations of the two programmes here have shown that parents benefit by gaining confidence in parenting and they feel happier and less stressed, said Mr Lee.

He said that the move to have the social service agencies helm the programmes instead of the individual schools will allow each agency to be a one-stop service provider for the region that can be more flexible in helping parents and with more customised support for each family.

“In our move towards these 10 regional PSPs, we have replicated the essential feature of our social sector strategy, which is to provide more integrated, upstream and comprehensive support,” said Mr Lee.

He added that over time, the scope of the programmes will be expanded to address a wider spectrum of needs and more programmes could be added.

Parenting Support Providers

Region / Social Service Agency

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