MINDS’ fifth day activity centre its largest so far

SINGAPORE — The Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore’s (MINDS) fifth day activity centre, which has the capacity to cater to twice as many intellectually-disabled clients as existing centres, is set to open in four to six months’ time.

The centre will take up an entire two-storey building within a new 8,000 sq m community cluster operated by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF). Located at 11 Jalan Ubi, where NorthLight School used to be, the cluster has six blocks that range from one to four storeys in height.

Other than the day activity centre, a soup kitchen and a rehabilitation facility for ex-offenders and persons recovering from addictions will also be housed at the cluster.

The MINDS centre will be able to cater to about 100 clients and will introduce work therapy on top of the usual social, recreational and work activities. Current MINDS centres only provide work training for clients to eventually enter sheltered workshops. About one or two clients “graduate” each year to sheltered workshops.

“We are looking at the possibility of them doing work here and, hopefully, get some pocket money. The intellectually-disabled are good at manual, repetitive work (such as packaging work),” said MINDS Chief Executive Officer Keh Eng Song.

As part of their work therapy, Mr Keh said he hopes to work with other voluntary welfare organisations (VWOs) in the community cluster; for instance, getting clients to cut vegetables for the soup kitchen.

MINDS is also hoping to introduce new programmes catering to clients’ caregivers at this location and there are ongoing discussions with the MSF.

The centre will take in both full- and part-time clients, a practice at MINDS since its centre at Tampines started the part-time programme from its opening in October last year.

Mr Keh added that it will move existing clients who live nearby to the new activity centre, thus freeing up space at its Ang Mo Kio and Tampines centres for those on the waiting list.

The MSF is funding the ongoing refurbishment of the community cluster and VWOs will be able to lease spaces at a lower rate compared to renting commercial properties.

The ministry is currently assessing the suitability of VWOs based on the “synergy” they can provide, such as conducting programmes jointly for clients or for the community, referring clients to other social services or programmes in the cluster, or having its clients or volunteers participating in another VWO’s programme.