Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Page 131

Special Editions
Service, the Minister may appoint a person who is not employed as a police
officer or prison officer to be a volunteer probation officer. These volunteers
were carefully selected for their positive attitude towards offenders and
given training on rehabilitation of offenders on probation. They were
given powers to supervise probationers. By letting the volunteer probation
officers handle some of the cases that require less intense supervision, the
probation officers were able to focus their attention on the more severe or
complex cases. This was the start of a more conscious delineation of what
a volunteer can do and the introduction of better deployment of human
resources to optimise the cost of delivering social services.
The Maintenance of Parents Act enacted in 1995 attracted equally great
interest from the social work fraternity including social work students. A
group made their submission to the Select Committee when the Bill was sent
for further consultation. The group’s articulation of the concept of a Tribunal
was taken on board and incorporated into the Act. The idea was that the
Tribunal with its membership including people from the community would
bring a less austere atmosphere to the hearing and make it less intimidating
for older persons. This was just one of many examples of how social work
training, which emphasises sensitivity to issues involving interpersonal
relationships, had contributed to effective solutions of social problems.

Social work’s contribution to nation building
In the early years of Singapore’s independence, the country’s population
was heterogeneous, being made up of immigrant people from different
countries and hence differed in terms of ethnicity, language and religion.
The population was made of many groups, with ethnic groups being the
most obvious. The government has always been concerned that ethnic
segregation and ethnic enclaves will divide the nation and contribute to
inter-ethnic conflict due to the absence of a common sense of community.
For example, in 1989, the government implemented an explicitly ethnicbased public housing policy that ensures ethnic diversity in housing estates
by stipulating quotas or limits on the proportion of residents of the same
ethnicity within a housing estate.
Social work contributed to the process of creating a Singapore national
identity out of the diverse people by fostering mutual help and support and
thereby developing a community. One important initiative in community
development was the formation of the Residential Committees (RCs). It is
not widely known that social work in fact played a significant role in the
development of the RCs.

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