Abstract

Community Link (ComLink) by Singapore's Ministry of Social and Family Development aims to enhance social mobility for rental flat families with young children through tailored services and community partnerships. While its universal entitlement model shows promise, challenges such as fragmented data sharing, limited volunteer resources, and family resistance reduce its effectiveness. Drawing on international models, this brief highlights key gaps and proposes solutions including enhanced data-sharing, professionalised volunteer roles, and empowering communities to strengthen ComLink’s scalability and impact globally.

Introduction to ComLink

Community Link (ComLink) is a flagship initiative launched by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) in Singapore. Designed to support families with young children living in rental flats, ComLink provides a coordinated suite of services aimed at fostering the 3 Ss: Stability, Self-reliance, and Social mobility. By integrating case management, community partnerships, and customised programmes, the initiative seeks to address the multi-faceted challenges faced by these families, including financial difficulties, limited access to opportunities, and social isolation (MSF, 2021). While ComLink has recently evolved into ComLink+, this piece will focus on the initial initiative to examine its foundational strategies and outcomes.

Evaluation on Policy Intent and Impact on Target Population

Overall, the policy intent of ComLink is family-focused as its intended outcomes reflect the interests of the family. Moreover, families’ needs and goals are considered in the policy design and have influence on the programmes and services offered to them. 

Firstly, ComLink is a prevention policy (Briar-Lawson et al., 2001) where assistance to the family is comprehensive and targeted so that the social capital of families can be built up. As families living in rental flats have complex needs, such as financial difficulties, health conditions, and limited literacy, their opportunity for social mobility can be short-changed easily as these factors impede their participation in the workforce or in mainstream learning environments, which are critical determinants to break out of the poverty cycle. Therefore, a coordinated approach of outreach, befriending, and whole-of-society effort has been taken to uplift these families permanently instead of uncoordinated assistance that does not address the wicked problem of poverty. This has manifested in the proactive approach of ComLink to provide customised case support and partnering with community partners and corporates to improve its reach, effectiveness, and sustainability. This mirrors approaches like the UK’s Troubled Families Programme (TFP), now renamed Supporting Families Programme, which has effectively employed a “key worker” model to coordinate multi-agency support and ensure long-term intervention effectiveness (Hayden & Jenkins, 2014). 

Secondly, ComLink is a universal entitlement programme (Briar-Lawson et al., 2001) that automatically connects rental flat families to services and resources without them needing to apply. Families are eligible as long as they are living in the rental block and have children below 21 years old. ComLink is also presumptive as there is a holistic understanding of families’ needs after outreach and needs assessment through focused group discussions. The impact on the family is likely to compound over time as their capacities and capabilities are built up. This presumptive approach aligns with international best practices, such as Australia’s Communities for Children, which ensures universal access while tailoring interventions to community needs (Edwards et al., 2010). For instance, academic and enrichment programmes (i.e., tuition and crafts) support the learning needs and goals of children from lower-income families, especially at times when they might fall behind in school because their parents are unable or unavailable to teach or play with them. Such opportunities facilitate civic participation and strengthen network diversity of these children for social mobility.

Thirdly, MSF has streamlined functions such as casework, befriending, and outreach within ComLink to manage bandwidth tax on families. Befrienders will be the consistent touch point for the family with backend support from ComLink officers. They will organise interventions into a single action plan and journey with families to achieve these goals. Hence, service integration through ComLink increases accessibility and uptake of programmes and services for families (Briar-Lawson et al., 2001). This also bolsters confidence among families that their stress is better managed, enabling them to build up capacities to meet their own needs such as seeking employment.

Evaluation on the Implementation of Community-Based Family Services

Using the Implementation in Action practice guide (Hateley-Browne et al., 2019), ComLink is assessed to be acceptable, appropriate, feasible, and has a wide reach. However, its fidelity is in question due to organisational readiness (Scaccia et al., 2015). Its factors are the motivation of an agency or service provider, the general capacities of an agency or service provider, and the program or practice-specific capacities needed to implement the intervention (Hateley-Browne et al., 2019).

Challenge 1: Limited information sharing within public-private partnerships.

As ComLink is a multi-stakeholder effort, it requires organisations to coordinate and align their programmes with the implementation direction. However, the limited information sharing between organisations affects the capacity of ComLink to have an impact on the family. These organisations may have varying levels of understanding, buy-in, and commitment towards the initiative. For example, as organisations do not share databases, partners may design and execute programmes from their own knowledge base due to inherent biases and assumptions about family needs.

Similarly, the Supporting Families programme in the United Kingdom has prioritised integrated multi-agency partnerships across local authorities while strengthening data systems. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (2023) reported significant investments in improving data sharing, with 43% of local authorities noting progress over the past year, up from 22% in 2021. However, access to data varied across sectors, with social care partners generally having higher access compared to health partners.

Recommendation: 

1. Policymakers to encourage information sharing across organisations. Ministries to accommodate organisational practices to enable more collaborative partnerships for more family-centred policies.

2. MSF to map and consolidate partners and programmes so that duplication of work can be reduced and agency resources can be diverted accordingly to address unmet needs.

Challenge 2: Limited outreach due to insufficient volunteers for the scale of the nationwide initiative.

ComLink faces resource constraints as they do not have sufficient ComLink befrienders to journey with the families. In nature, the work is high touch, requiring befrienders to check in with a family at least twice a month. A current befriender is estimated to be taking on 5 families based on present statistics of 760 volunteers to 3,500 families (Parliament of Singapore, 2023), which is significant considering that these befrienders are not social work trained. Most befrienders stay for a minimum commitment period of 6 months and drop off afterwards (CNA, 2023), which can present difficulties for forward planning as manpower is uncertain. Hence, the dependence on befrienders, coupled with a shortage of volunteers, limits outreach and leads to organisational inefficiency.

Looking at Australia’s implementation of Communities for Children, a similar model has been effective in engaging local community leaders to build capacity, offering stipends to incentivise participation (Edwards et al., 2010). This approach could be adapted to engage rental flat residents as community befrienders, fostering sustainability and empowering local leaders.

Recommendation: 

1. Grassroots to shed light on ground-up initiatives and encourage society to recognise the strengths of low-income families. Create platforms for rental flat families to articulate and self-organise efforts to support one another, empowering them to be self-sufficient (Juhari & Tan, 2023).

2. Social service agencies to be tapped on for expertise in community work. Tap on Asset-Based Community Development as a modality to engage existing beneficiaries as potential befrienders. MSF could provide a stipend to these informal community leaders (Parliament of Singapore, 2023) or work out an arrangement for their service such that it contributes towards their CPF, in doing so build up their reserves for eventual home ownership.

Challenge 3: Implementation of programmes is not as simple as it seems.

Befrienders might encounter difficulties working with the demographic of rental block families if families are not as receptive. While the approach of pumping resources into families seems relatively straightforward, the policy might not yield expected outcomes on the ground if families are not willing and able to change. Families might feel that their sense of agency is taken away with ComLink automatically stepping in to screen and intervene for the family. They might also not fully comprehend programmes if they are less educated or come from a transnational background. Some families may exhibit learned helplessness regarding their circumstances and resist support from external parties. 

The onus is then on befrienders to understand the barriers these families face, to increase motivation for change, and to pace with families; which also means that adequate knowledge, skills, and attitude are required of befrienders, thereby increasing the complexity of intervention. Thus, the befriending approach is less easily scalable as service delivery is difficult to be consistent across all families.

Recommendation: 

1. MSF to work with the Centre for Evidence and Implementation to set implementation standards for programmes through ComLink. Enforce these standards for onboarded partners. Use successful community programmes as case studies to inspire stakeholders.

2. MSF to manage expectations in working with rental block families with partners and volunteers. To encourage empathy through perspective taking and pacing during these trainings.

Conclusion

ComLink represents a promising step forward in addressing systemic poverty and supporting vulnerable families in Singapore. By integrating family-centric policies with proactive outreach and multi-stakeholder collaboration, the initiative demonstrates the potential to transform lives. However, challenges such as limited data sharing, volunteer shortages, and resistance among families highlight the need for further refinement.

Drawing lessons from international programmes like the UK’s Supporting Families Programme and Australia’s Communities for Children, ComLink can strengthen its framework through improved coordination, community empowerment, and tailored interventions. By addressing these gaps, ComLink not only enhances its immediate impact but also establishes itself as a scalable model for advancing social mobility and inclusivity.