Member of parliament Louis Ng has been a leading legislative voice on the work and welfare of the Singaporean social worker. We touch on four themes in this episode – pay and compensation, burnout and retention, case management and caseload ratio, as well as community work – before sharing his ongoing public consultation for social workers.
Two years ago, SG Climate Rally made headlines in September 2019 and created momentum for a range of activities and initiatives. Two years later in 2021, climate change activists in Singapore were frustrated by the lack of systemic or structural progress at COP26, or the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference. The frustration is perhaps compounded by persistent apathy or lethargy among Singaporeans too. As such, is there a feeling of pessimism or even hopelessness, that institutional changes will be perpetually inadequate in terms of scale and timeliness?
The work and welfare of the Singaporean social worker are scrutinised every now and then, most recently when member of parliament Carrie Tan raised the question on who is allowed to be a social worker. Episodes like this do help increase public awareness, but such discourse should instead be sustained with greater consistency. In introducing the new “The Work of Social Work” podcast mini-series, as a small starting space, future episodes will be devoted to parliamentary questions and policy proposals raised in parliament, community-building, and practice research.
So much ink has been spilled on Singapore’s healthcare and public health response to the ongoing pandemic. Yet, there will be an end to COVID-19, and the start of 2022 feels like a good time to shift some of the public focus to our country’s long-term, pandemic-linked social challenges. In this short episode, I summarise the most urgent and obvious problems – migrant, healthcare, and economically disadvantaged essential workers – before detailing four challenges which have received less attention: First, the harm to children, adolescents, and youths; second, compounded socio-economic inequality; third, social isolation; and fourth, ambiguous loss and unresolved grief.
This roundup summarises the most important news stories around the world in the last month (December 2021).
socialservice.sg 