ANNUAL REPORT 2010 / 2011 - MINDS

PRESIDENT’S
REVIEW
In recognition of the success of the Community Group Home
project, MINDS was awarded the NCSS Outstanding VWO Award
2010 – Special Mention in Innovation, during the NCSS Members
Conference in 2010.
With the success of the Community Group Home, there is now
greater impetus to provide a range of residential options for special
needs persons.
We thank the residents of the local community for accepting our
clients into their midst.
Open Employment and Productive Work
As at March 2011, a total of 36 clients have been placed in open
employment at hotels, fast food restaurants, warehouses and
leisure outlets under the Job Placement and Job Support Program
(JPJS) Programme, and more than 80% of them were able to
maintain their employment for at least 6 months. In addition, 41
clients and 16 of our staff successfully completed the WDA’s WSQ
Food Hygiene course.
The year under review has been a fruitful year as we made
incremental and concrete strides towards increasing the capacity
of our Training and Development Centre (TDC) services, improving
the employment opportunities for our adult clients in both
open employment and sheltered environments, enhancing our
professional knowledge and expertise to raise the quality of our
services, improving how we engage our stakeholders, and last but
not least, building management leadership, developing talent and
nurturing a culture of passion for service.
A Fourth TDC
After a fairly extensive period of advocacy and consultation, the
Ministry of Community Development Youth & Sports (MCYS) has
granted our appeal for a new TDC in view of the long waitlist for day
activity services. We are now working with the National Council of
Social Service (NCSS) and the Housing Development Board (HDB)
to identify a suitable site and are targeting 2012 for the opening of
our 4th TDC.
We have operated our TDCs as enhanced versions of Day Activity
Centres (DACs) to cope with the high support needs of our clients.
We are able to do this because of our economies of scale. Based on
our projections, more TDCs will be required to meet the demands
of our clients with high support needs. We will continue to engage
and consult with our funding bodies to meet this demand.
Community Group Home goes into operation at Bedok
After considerable planning and preparation, 5 of our clients
moved into 2 rented flats at Bedok in May 2010 to form the first
Community Group Home in Singapore. This provision of a wider
range of residential options for special needs persons is a significant
milestone in improving the quality of life of special needs persons
and a major step towards a more inclusive society.
In going operational, our staff, together with the local Residents
Committee, worked hard to create understanding and acceptance
of the Community Group Home and our clients within the local
community.
I am told that having enjoyed the independence of community
living, none of the 5 of them could ever imagine going back to living
in an institutional home. I am also told that quite a few residents
within the local community have come forward to befriend our
clients and to volunteer their assistance.
For many years, our sheltered workshops and social enterprises
have been providing productive work for our adult clients. The
recycling of headsets for Singapore Airlines and Singapore Airport
Terminal Services has been and will continue to be a mainstay of
productive work at our sheltered workshops. Our social enterprise
units, MINDS Shop, MINDS Food, MINDS Perform, MINDS Craft
and MINDS Wash also have provided a varied range of productive
work beneficial to our clients. Over the year, we have built upon
these viable platforms for productive work.
Building a social enterprise to meet the needs of our clients is by
any reckoning a challenging task. I am nevertheless confident that
the work we have done over the year will yield results in the near
future.
Celebrating Caregivers, Families and Volunteers
The combined MINDS Caregivers Support Group annual party and
MINDS MYG family day saw the largest turnout of nearly 1,000
caregivers, family members, clients and volunteers on 5 March
2011 at the Toa Payoh Community Club. It was heartening to
see families and volunteers come together for a day of fun and
friendship.
Over the course of the year in review, each of the schools and adult
centres conducted a range of activities for families and volunteers.
We also improved our channels of communication with caregivers
and volunteers. This included a revamp of our MINDS website at
www.minds.org.sg and the revamp of MINDSpeak, which I believe
better reflect the vibrancy, colour and potential of our clients, and
the dedication, hard work and professionalism of our staff and
volunteers.
MINDS will continue with its efforts to build capacity and expertise
in supporting caregivers, families and volunteers.
‘Schools of Excellence where Every Individual Matters’
That is the Vision Statement which the teachers and allied health
professionals at our four schools, led by their Principals, came up
with as their Vision Statement. In keeping with that Vision, the
schools have in the course of the year been focusing their efforts
on enhancing the quality of their services both at the macro and
individual student level.
Through a process of self-evaluation, the Schools have been
preparing for the Quality Assurance Framework developed by
the Ministry of Education (MOE) and NCSS and will be ready
when external validation commences later this year or next year.
The school curriculum was also further refined and rolled out in
MINDS ANNUAL REPORT 2010 / 2011 7