LUI Pui Shan Betsy

The University of Hong Kong Department of Social Work & Social Administration

Overseas Fieldwork Placement - Singapore Student’s Summary Report

3 June - 9 August 2019

LUI Pui Shan Betsy

Program of Study: Master of Social Work (Part-time) Agency Name: AMKFSC Community Services Ltd. - Cheng San Family Service Centre Duration of Placement: 3 June - 9 August 2019

Introduction of the Placement Agency

Social, Cultural, Context of the Country of the Service Agency

Singapore has a very similar international status as Hong Kong, which is a well developed country with stable economic growth ranking the 3rd highest GDP per capita. Singapore is a multicultural country with citizens from different backgrounds. English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are the four common languages used in this country. Nearly all the residents could speak at least two languages.

The government of Singapore is highly aware of the living standard of the residents. Housing, education, healthcare services and personal safety are the priorities of the government. In order to enhance the cultural integration and harmony, the government has implemented different policies to increase the acceptance level of residents in embracing different cultures. For example, for each residential building, the government has set a fixed percentage of flats would be given to a particular ethnic group. Thus, people from various ethnicities could communicate and know each other in the same community.

The social welfare system of Singapore believes that family is the basic yet the most important unit in the community. The government therefore encourages the establishment of family

service centers in different areas in order to tackle family issues, and provide appropriate tangible and emotional support to the residents in the community. Family service centers, located under residential blocks in Singapore, consist of social workers from diverse backgrounds to deal with different types of clients.

History, Nature, Scope of Service and Characteristics of Clientele

AMKFSC Community Services Ltd. (AMKFSC) is one of the first social service agencies in Singapore. It was established in 1978 with the full support from the government to offer financial and psychosocial services to residents across Ang Mo Kio, Sengkang and Punggol. Now, AMKFSC provides a comprehensive range of services to different groups of people including children & youth, family, seniors, and people with special needs. I was attached to Cheng San Family Service Center which is the second family service center of AMKFSC serving the Ang Mo Kio community for around 24 years. Ang Mo Kio is an old community of Singapore, so social workers have to manage a wide range of clientele. Financial, family and emotional issues are the top three presenting problems in the community. Therefore I could explore these kinds of problems by observing and co-working with social workers on various cases.

Casework is the main focus of Cheng Sane FSC, followed by some supporting programs and projects. As a result, I had quite a lot of chances to learn how social workers in the agency provide support and intervention to families. Risk assessment and safety issues are always the top priorities of social workers when they meet their clients. Social workers are highly aware of the family violence and child protection cases.

With regard to the needs of offering comprehensive interventions to families, and build up the mutual support in the community, group and community work are considered to be more important than in the past. AMKFSC has tried to facilitate more group and community work.

Together with my rich experience in organizing group work, programs and projects, I got many opportunities to work with other social workers to plan, organize and implement around 10 programs and projects.

Specific Service/Program you have been Engaged

Many opportunities were offered by the agency for me to understand the services and the Ang Mo Kio community. I have attended a community walk, 7 home visits, 1 door knocking visit and 5 case review meetings with front-line social workers; and proactively talking to different residents. Besides, I have also assisted in 3 sessions of information and referral; and the counter reception. I therefore got more familiar with the working culture, scope of services, working procedures, assessment as well as intervention approaches of the agency. I also attended 3 case discussions, 1 company event, 3 training workshops, 1 group supervision with staff, 1 seminar (A Discussion for Child Sexual Abuse), 1 IMH inter-agency case conference, 1 family violence working group meeting and one-day attachment to Mindcare to understand the recent work of the agency, and the social services in Singapore. The group supervision together with other young front-line workers had impressed me a lot in terms of the self-reflection and reviewing values of social work. The group supervision in Cheng San FSC was a valuable learning opportunity to acquire new knowledge, and learn from other colleagues about their daily practice.

The inter-agency case conference was particularly beneficial for me since I heard sharing from social workers, counsellors, psychologists and other experts to learn how to manage a case with mental health issues from different perspectives. The attachment to MindCare and visit to Institute of Mental Health gave me opportunities to understand more mental health issues and

circumstances in Singapore. Moreover, attending case discussion meetings and training workshops enhanced my understanding on how to handle cases from different perspectives, and the working approaches of the agency in handling family cases. Applying BPSS and Good Lives models into practice, and how to be more aware of doing risk assessment had been covered in various training sessions.

I have also assisted some projects and programs initiated by the agency including the Project Taste Buds, M1 Peer Pleasure Youth Theatre Festival, Tape Tape World, Project Facelift, Nanyang Polytechnic Visit, ACCF, and Project Chicken Soup. For the Project Taste Buds, I planned two sessions with the other three placement students to engage the ambassadors and clients of Project PASAR. The purposes of the sessions were to promote the concept of healthy eating at affordable costs, and empower them to be involved in helping each other. For the Project Facelift, I was the main person-in-charge to collect opinions from different colleagues regarding the interior design of the counseling rooms in the center. It was a good opportunity for me not only to understand how counseling rooms would affect the work of the social workers, but also get to know each worker individually to discuss about their journeys of being a social worker. For the Project Chicken Soup, I had three extremely rewarding interviews with three senior social workers in Singapore to learn from their perspectives on the landscape of social work, their passion and beliefs. Their experience, criticism and questions were good inspiration for me to think of my future career.

Apart from the attachment to MindCare, I could also visit two COMNET (senior service centres) the centre of Youth Infinity to understand their work and services.

Brief Account of the Work Assignments

Basic Information and Background

On the first two days of my placement at Cheng San FSC, I discussed with my supervisor to know my scope of work, and the timeline of different programs, group work and projects. My supervisor also discussed her and my expectations on this placement. She then offered me different opportunities to get involved including various chances to observe her work. During the 10-week placement, I had explored and learned different parts of the services of the centre. I also started planning program sessions in the first two weeks. My supervisor and other social workers would come to me to get me involved in different work and activities at any time. Therefore, I have to be well prepared myself since some events could happen within a short period of time. Even though preparation time might not be sufficient, I considered them as a good challenge for me to actually examine my capabilities in handling things maturely as a social worker.

I had to work independently, keep motivated, be self-disciplined, and proactively ask for new chances to get more involvement and learning opportunities. Otherwise, not much work would be assigned to me when the social workers were busy on their own work.

With the right attitude, colleagues at Cheng San FSC considered me as a mature students, so they would give me more chances to handle things including case work and programs.

Needs Assessment

By observing different social workers’ case sessions, attending trainings and case review meetings, and discussing with my supervisor as well as other workers before and after each session, I learnt a lot on how to assess client’s needs from different perspectives. Family issues are more complicated with many factors to be taken care of. As a result, learning different need assessment approaches from various social workers could broaden my perspective in handling cases. BPSS model is one of the models that social workers at Cheng San FSC frequently use. I also learnt how to implement this model into practice.

Casework

I had been to 7 home visits, and 5 case sessions. I had also assisted one social worker to prepare a client for the interview of the shelter. I therefore had opportunities to understand the profiles and problems faced by people in the community, and a clearer picture of family services offered by the agency. In particular, with the purpose of exploring such a multicultural country when I decided to do overseas placement in Singapore, I got a deeper understanding on how the multicultural atmosphere can be facilitated, and the attitudes of social workers. After the placement, I understood more about various cultures, and how cultural factors affect the dynamic of a family.

I had 3 case sessions for the same family. Co-working with the social worker on the marital relationship of the clients, I could practice my counseling skills to show my empathetic understanding and build a good relationship with both husband and wife. During the debriefing with the worker, I realised that my skills of reflecting client’s feelings had helped a lot in the session to connect and engage the client.

BPSS model, risk assessment tools and narrative approach are commonly used in the agency. Thus I have exploration on these aspects as well.

Group Work

I was involved in two groups - DOT Curriculum Under ROOTS (Retaining Our Origins; Transitioning to Singapore) & the children’s group under ROOTS. For the DOT, it was a group for women to get prepared and equipped to get jobs in the market with cooperation with an outside human resource organization. My main duty was to assist the women who could not understand and speak English to be able to participate in the group, thus my communication and organizational skills were particularly important to help those clients get the key learning points. I also gave my inputs to make the learning content to be more appropriate for the clients from other cultural backgrounds since some explanations in English might not be applicable to Chinese.

For the children’s group under ROOTS, due to my previous experience working for the children and youth, I contributed some ideas for the session planning in order to maximise the learning benefits of the children in the group. Besides, I was involved in running the group, and assisted the children in each activity.

I had the chance to observe two sessions of another employability group to understand what kinds of content would be included in the group, and the needs of clients when they try to find a job in the market.

Program

I planned and ran a session for a group of children at the Spright Academy with the topic of bullying. Using the approach of experiential learning, activities in the form of drawing, games, sharing were used as a means to engage the children, and teach them concepts of bullying. The session was successfully completed followed by an internal debriefing, and a documentation for record.

Community Work

“Appreciating Caregivers, Celebrating Families” (ACCF) was the biggest community work program at the agency, and I assisted the social workers to organize and run the event. This community work had involved different clients from 9 programs organized by the agency, and residents in Ang Mo Kio. I was an emcee on stage to present the various programs to the residents in the community in order to let them understand the work of the agency and the rationales of organizing these programs.

Reflections on Professional and Personal Growth Gained from This Placement

Personal Growth

Understanding the multi-cultural environment of Singapore and working with people from diverse backgrounds are two of my objectives of coming to Singapore. As compared with Hong Kong, the cultural integration in Singapore is much better, in particular, people are more willing to get in touch with others from other ethnicities. Language is not an issue for Singaporeans. This observation has inspired me a lot, and I would like to bring this idea to younger generations in Hong Kong, to remind them to accept anyone without judgement on the races.

Language was not an obstacle for me to do my placement in Singapore, as I was able to conduct sessions in both English and Mandarin other than my mother tongue (Cantonese). Another memorable breakthrough was to do my practice for families. Since I had no experience

in family service in Hong Kong before, I was impressed and learnt a lot from the family service centre in Singapore. From the stage with lots of uncertainties to the stage of engaging the residents successfully, lots of personal mental obstacles had been overcome after stepping out the first step. Thanks to the guidance of my supervisor and other senior social workers, I trained up my sensitivity and observation sense to look at things in a more holistic perspective especially the risk assessment as well as management. I could also explore how the ABCD model was implemented in Singapore. This was my second placement, so I tried to give more feedback and comments to colleagues and supervisor so that programs and services could be improved further with references from Hong Kong and my previous experience.

In addition, I made lots of Singaporean friends, and exchanged different ideas over the 10-week placement. I strongly believe that our friendship can last.

Professional Development

The placement has helped me to consolidate and boost what I have learnt so far as a social worker in the family setting. I got chances to practice my skills and figure out my own values and belief systems. I even understand more how my personality and previous experience affect my practice with clients as well as organizing program sessions. Therefore, I constantly reminded myself to think critically, do self-reflection and consider factors from different perspectives particularly at a position of a social worker for families. Compared with the first placement, I am more confident in tackling cases at Cheng San FSC.

From this placement experience, I am not only limited to improve my weaknesses or strengthen my capabilities, I have paid more attention to establish ways to practice in ways that value and respect clients. I learnt from my supervisor and colleagues on how to giving valuable feedback and encouragement to clients after each program / group session. From the feedback I provided, I observed that the clients could be benefited with the feeling of being respected. Appreciation is also very significant when working with clients.

In this placement, I have been more sensitive to feelings, emotions and needs of clients since I understand clearly that enhancing the therapeutic relationship starts from how I put myself into clients’ shoes to engage them from clients’ viewpoints.

Additionally, I was able to use different skills such as questioning, clarification and confrontation to facilitate clients’ expression in both case sessions and programs. I was able to build up a trustful and healthy relationship with all the clients. The workers were willing to share their opinions and insights, which helped me better equip for the upcoming unpredictable issues.

I have lots of experience working with youth, yet this was the first time I practice in family service. After the first placement which was in youth outreach, I totally understand the significance in working for family system. The behaviours and emotions of youth are largely influenced by their families, thus it is essential to understand how family, parents and other family members affect the youth, and meanwhile learn the assessment and intervention approaches for family system. Handling a family case is not easy, because multidimensional issues could happen at the same time including children schooling and behaviors, parenting, financial issues, and housing. Thus I have learnt how to prioritize the problems based on a few criteria and assessment tools.

Sharing of Feelings

This overseas placement was gorgeous and fruitful in both personal and professional development. Before the placement, I had been to Europe and North America for exchange study and internship. Yet I had never lived in another Asian country for more than 1 month. As social work emphasizes on local practice, I would like to experience how the social services of other Asian countries would be. Singapore was definitely on the top of my list. I have no regret of choosing Singapore to do my final placement because of the opportunities I got and the people I met. In particular, AMKFSC is a very good agency for placement students to learn with full support from staff and the supervisor. The exchange of ideas and observations had enriched my learning. Last but not least, experiencing different national festivals had further enhanced my cultural exchange experience. Somehow going overseas may not be necessary to be far away to Europe or America, rewarding experience can be gained in a small country like Singapore.