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Four social workers honoured for high standards, dedication

Ms Julia Lee (centre) chatting with a group of senior citizens at the TOUCH Seniors Activity Centre in Geylang Bahru. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

Ms Julia Lee (centre) chatting with a group of senior citizens at the TOUCH Seniors Activity Centre in Geylang Bahru. Photo: Ooi Boon Keong

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SINGAPORE — With 29 years of social work experience under her belt, helping vulnerable seniors and the intellectually disabled, Ms Julia Lee knows the importance of taking a break from the daily grind to build a long-term career in the industry.

In 2006, the director of the Department of Social Work and Seniors Activity Centre at TOUCH Community Services spent three months away from work to nurse herself back to health. “(I) relooked my priorities in life; one of (them) was that I needed to have good health before I can continue to be able to help other people,” said the 52-year-old, noting that social workers can suffer from burnout.

Ms Lee was among the two winners of the Outstanding Social Worker Award (OSWA) yesterday, given out to recognise social workers for their dedication and high standards achieved in their respective specialisations.

Ms Lee’s long list of achievements include setting up TOUCH Home Care in 1992, when home care services for the elderly were still relatively unknown here. The idea for the programme came after she noticed that low-income seniors were living alone in the Bendemeer neighbourhood and had little social support.

She also spearheaded a social enterprise project, TOUCH SpecialCrafts, that taps the artistic talents of special needs clients to help them find alternative employment. At the TOUCH Seniors Activity Centre, Ms Lee ropes in senior volunteers to help with home visits and act as medical or hospital escorts for other seniors.

The veteran social worker has this advice for younger counterparts hoping to take on new projects: Pick up networking skills.

Junior social workers, she noted, can get so caught up with their work that they are less involved in other areas, such as understanding the social service landscape and connecting with the various stakeholders in the sector.

“When (social workers) are caught up with their cases, they don’t look at how they can tap community resources. In community work, you are really required to work with (these) resources, the schools, the institutions, the corporations … (They) must know how to package their cause in such a way that people will want to join you and want to take action.”

Ms Lee added: “It’s very important to network with people, social workers need to learn to do more (of) that.”

Displaying such networking skills is Ms Lee Sin Yan, assistant senior social worker with Ang Mo Kio Family Service Centre Community Services and one of the two winners of the Promising Social Worker Award (PSWA), given to those who have displayed strong leadership qualities and competencies despite being relatively new to the industry.

The 27-year-old played an important role in the Bakery Hearts programme, an initiative that not only sells baked goods, but aims to help unemployed mothers from low-income families to find work by teaching them marketing and leadership skills, for instance. To ensure that these mothers have work to do all year round, Ms Lee actively reached out to cafes, social enterprises and other businesses to get them to come on board the programme. As a result, Bakery Hearts’ revenue grew more than six times between 2010, when the programme was introduced, and last year.

The OSWA and PSWA winners received S$1,000 each from the Ministry of Social and Family Development and were also awarded a personal development grant of S$10,000 and S$8,000, respectively, from ExxonMobil Asia Pacific, and S$30,000 and S$14,000 in MSF sponsorship, respectively, for professional and leadership development training.

Also receiving the OSWA yesterday was manager of the Medical Social Work Department at St Luke’s Hospital, Ms Cheung Siew Li, who started her career 19 years ago. Senior social worker at Care Corner Family Service Centre (Queenstown) Michelle Wong was the other PSWA winner.

Now in its 15th year, the award is organised by the Singapore Association of Social Workers with the support of the MSF and ExxonMobil Asia Pacific.

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