The Marriage Preparation eLearning Course promotes healthy marriages and helps prepare couples for marital life. Couples can e-learn a range of topics (from sexual relationships to financial management) in the comfort of their own homes and at their own pace. They can also interact online with professional marriage counselors and other couples through online chats and discussion forums.

Outcome 4: Delight customers in the delivery of integrated e-Services
The Directory of Family and Community Services makes searching for services (e.g. child care, student care, family support, disability, elder care, financial assistance, social services) a breeze, by putting all these services into a comprehensive one-stop directory. Public can tailor their search based on their individual needs. For example, a parent can narrow-down a search for a child care centre according to the distance from their home or price range. Contact details, a virtual map of the centre’s location and other useful information of the selected centres are shown on the site.

The Disability Portal provides the disabled and their care-givers a one-stop access to information and referral services on disability. It is a joint collaboration project with NCSS, to make it easy for citizens to search for relevant services by type of disability, age group or service required.

Public can visit each virtual job booth at the Virtual Career Fair Website to find out more about social service professions and community-based jobs.

Family and Community Development Town is the gateway for citizens to access comprehensive family and community services. There’s something for everyone – dating services for singles, marriage services and parenthood schemes for couples, etc.

Outcome 5: Strategic Management Information Systems for more effective policy and programmes
The Integrated Case Management System enables effective tracking and managing of clients and cases across branches. Case officers can see the complete case history of their clients, which helps them to administer the right rehabilitative programmes. It enables MCYS to study client profiles and analyse trends so as to devise more effective policies and programmes for early intervention.

Where we are today
Within a short span of four years, Singapore has leapfrogged to become one of the more advanced countries in the world with the integration of IT in the community and social service sector. We are on par with Canada, Australia and the United States and the most advanced amongst the Southeast Asia countries. MCYS’ efforts in the delivery of family, community and social services have been recognised by various International and Regional IT Awards programmes. »continue next page