Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Page 144

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ensuring or facilitating social integration. The ability to integrate people
in multicultural societies and to foster inclusion and solidarity is equally
vital for human survival. Social development must build human capacities,
afford opportunities to enable citizens, regardless of their background
and social identity, to fulfil their potential and have full participation. A
major problem besetting our world is that of conflict or disintegration.
The conflict could be by race, religion, age, gender or class. The cost of
disintegration in multicultural and diverse societies, such as Singapore, is
great. Social exclusions bring about a host of problems amongst which are
unemployment, discrimination, inequality in the distribution of wealth and
services, racism and sexism. Thus, it is important to integrate people and
enable people to relate justly and effectively with one another.

The Essence of Social Development
Many societies use the institution of social welfare to provide all citizens with
opportunities to participate more fully in society and to achieve their potential.
In this regard, social welfare includes those provisions and processes directly
concerned with improving the quality of life, the development of human
resources and the treatment and prevention of social problems. It involves
social services to individuals and families as well as efforts to strengthen
or modify social institutions and social welfare functions to maintain the
social system and to adapt it to changing social realities. (Romanyshyn &
Romanyshyn, 1971, p. 3)
Social welfare provisions therefore encompass diverse public and private
social services. For example, the social welfare system may provide family
and child welfare services, medical and health provisions, legal services,
criminal justice activities and income support. Social welfare may provide
these services as social utilities that are available to all people and groups
as the rights of citizens. In addition, social welfare services may meet
specialized needs or address the unique problems of particular groups of
people. (Dubois & Miley, 2014)
Ideally, social welfare responds by providing adequate income, housing,
education, health care and personal safety. The beneficiaries of social welfare
are not restricted to any one group of people. Social welfare provides benefits
for the whole population. Some examples include education services and
Singapore’s distinctive Central Provident Fund (CPF) system and education
targeted at everyone. This frame of reference suggests that users of public
utility services, including social welfare, are citizens with rights rather than
people who are deprived, deviant, helpless and stigmatized.
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