We thank Ms Peggy Ong for her letter “Deeper look into risk of family abuse warranted after child’s death” (May 3). We appreciate that her feedback focuses on improving our systems and is not about assigning blame.

The safety and well-being of children is the priority of the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), and we are continually working with our partners to learn from past cases and improve our processes.

Following Ayeesha’s death in 2017, a review was done to identify areas for improvement.

We have since enhanced our protocols with community agencies supporting these families, including regular safety checks and monitoring of the children and their families. For example, they are now visited by workers at least once a month for up to a year or longer after the children are reunified with their families, to ensure their overall well-being. If parents refuse to engage with these community agencies, MSF will intervene and, if necessary, invoke powers under the Children and Young Persons Act to ensure that case workers have access to these children.

These enhancements help ensure that vulnerable children are sighted regularly and that any signs of abuse are detected early.

MSF has regularly reviewed our approach over the years to better detect harm to children, and to have well-trained professionals intervene promptly to prevent further harm. These efforts have led to increased community awareness, resulting in more child abuse cases being detected, reported, and addressed in partnership with our community agencies. We believe these efforts have saved lives. However, there is more work to be done.

We seek the public’s support for our case workers, front-line professionals, and others who work to protect children. They have to make difficult decisions on whether to remove a child from their biological parents. Some of these parents do not accept that they have done anything wrong, and continue to question or criticise the assessments of the professionals. This is to the detriment of the children’s well-being.

Beyond these professionals, we as a society must bear collective responsibility to keep our children safe. Each of us must do our part to build a caring society, to nurture and protect every individual and every child.

Terrence Goh
Senior Director, Rehabilitation and Protection Group
Ministry of Social and Family Development