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SINGAPORE - Adults with disabilities will receive support to live independently in the community in the coming years, alongside care and coaching services to meet their needs through life. Up to 250 individuals will join a pilot known as Enabled Living Programme from 2025 to 2028, where they will live in a cluster of Housing Board rental flats or be supported in their own homes. Help could include coaching in social skills, care support for daily living activities and on-site monitoring, depending on their needs. The target group for the pilot, which is a key recommendation from a task force looking at housing and care models for people with disabilities (PWDs), is adults with low to moderate needs who require support to live and participate in the community. The Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) and disability agency SG Enable will work with relevant agencies to design and implement the scheme, and better understand the support needed by PWDs to live on their own in the community. Currently, most PWDs are living with their family members. Of those enrolled in day activity centres and sheltered workshops, about one-third, or 1,000, have at least one caregiver aged 65 and above, said the Taskforce on Community Living for Persons with Disabilities in its report released on Sept 16. Mr Eric Chua, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Social and Family Development, said: “Through our engagements, persons with disabilities and caregivers have asked for alternative housing and service models so that persons with disabilities can continue living in the community as long as possible, even when their family members and primary caregivers have passed on.” He was announcing several initiatives planned for PWDs to work and live in the community, at the Enabling Academy Learning Festival 2024 on Sept 16, which was held at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Eunos. The task force was formed in 2022 under the , Singapore’s latest road map to support people with disabilities and enable them to contribute to society. All its recommendations have been accepted by the MSF. The 18-member task force is co-chaired by Ms Jacelyn Lim, executive director of Autism Resource Centre (Singapore), or ARC, and Ms Cynthia Leow, senior director of MSF’s Family and Child Development Policy Directorate. The Enabled Living Programme will provide on-site support for PWDs in a cluster of HDB rental flats at a pilot site, which has yet to be identified. The service provider can subsequently extend means-tested services to PWDs residing near the pilot site, either alone or with their families. Support will be provided within their homes, with priority given to families who require caregiving help. “Social inclusion is also crucial for community living,” said the task force in its report, recommending that PWDs also need to be more socially engaged through a wider network of informal support like residents in the neighbourhood and social activities. Ms Lim said that insights will be drawn from ARC’s own residential living pilot, as well as existing service models such as the Touch Ubi Hostel and community care apartments, to develop the Enabled Living Programme. The organisation’s was set up in 2022, with support from Autism Association (Singapore). It currently has five residents living in several units in the same block of flats in Ang Mo Kio. An on-site residential coach offers training and support. Ms Lim told The Straits Times: “The quality of life of our residents has improved, from having greater social engagement to getting better sleep, as well as having an increased breadth and depth of independent living skills.” With the right training and support, individuals on the autism spectrum can thrive in community living, she added. Another proposal is to improve community-based services to provide PWDs with higher support needs a continuum of services to gain independent living and vocational skills. Today, these PWDs enrol in a sheltered workshop, day activity centre, or home-based Intervention service. Transition across services are limited, even as PWDs’ needs change over the course of their lives, said the task force. More than 30 per cent of day activity centre clients and 50 per cent of sheltered workshop clients have remained in their respective services for more than 10 years, it said. MSF and SG Enable will work with selected disability social service agencies to review and enhance these programmes, exploring ways to provide more flexible support for skills training. This could include extending home-based interventions to PWDs with higher behavioural needs, with the aim to transit them into centre-based services over time, or working with caregivers to help PWDs acquire skills in a systematic way and reinforce skills learnt within the home setting. The task force also said there is a need for a more unified care plan centred around PWDs and their goals rather than services, especially for those over 18. Currently, such individual care plans are tied to specific disability services. MSF, SG Enable and the Ministry of Education (MOE) will partner disability sector professionals to develop a framework to support PWDs and their caregivers to identify their goals, needs and future care plans. From 2025, MOE will involve family members more intently in developing individual transition plans for every student from 15 years old, before they graduate from special education schools. These plans will capture students’ interests and aspirations, along with the support and pathways needed to progress successfully to post-school life. Ms Margaret Chee, 47, is prepared for the day she will be living alone, having acquired independent living skills from Touch Ubi Hostel, a service of Touch Community Services. “I am not afraid now,” she said. “I have friends, and I learnt cooking and household chores.” Ms Chee, who has mild intellectual disability, has been living with her maternal relatives, including her uncle, a retired painter, ever since her parents died three decades ago. She has found work as a packer with Journey, a local brand under Touch Community Services that represents the creative talents of people with intellectual disabilities. Mr Tay Ah Huat, 63, her uncle and primary caregiver, said he is less worried about her future now, even as he is ageing. “Everyone grows old, and the time will come for her to live alone independently. She has improved a lot since her training at Touch Ubi Hostel.” The hostel houses 30 PWDs, aged 21 to 62, in five HDB four- and three-room flats in Ubi, just a floor above the activity hall at the void deck. In addition to three staff who attend to their day-to-day care needs, there are three life skills coaches who conduct training in areas like financial planning, psychological well-being and social skills. Ms Ang Chiew Geok, group head of Touch Special Needs Group, said the fact that the hostel has been around since 1998 shows that it is possible for people with intellectual disabilities to live independently in the community. “We have achieved this by equipping our trainees with sustainable life skills, enabling the community and providing easy access to professional support in the community,” she said. “We look forward to opportunities that will enable us to provide more of such community living facilities to address the needs of people with disabilities and their caregivers.”