Resources for Practitioners
Resources for Practitioners
As a Social Service Agency (SSA), we aim to leverage on our expertise and experience to produce resources that serve to benefit the wider social service community of practitioners.
In 2020, staff from Tinkle Friend team worked with our Research Unit to study the role Tinkle Friend service played during the year, capturing their findings in “Tinkle Friend: Year in Review 2020.”
This document provides a snapshot of who was using Tinkle Friend and highlights the trends observed during the year, underscoring children’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. Across helpline calls and online chats, the reasons children reached out to us ranged from their desire for casual chit-chat to a need for support on school-related issues, social relationships, mental health concerns, and bullying.
Findings from this document highlight the crucial role that Tinkle Friend plays in supporting child users. They also highlight the need to let children’s voices guide our work and the need to promote mental health support among children, especially those who experience difficulties in accessing support from their existing social networks.
Read more here.
Some of the guiding principles of the Singapore Children’s Society’s approach to overcoming challenges in youth management have been captured in “A Guide to Youth Drop-In Centres: Reflections from Research and Practice”.
It brings together the research, theories and reflections that have guided the set-up of the Society’s youth drop-in spaces and its effective engagement with youths.
The guide captures the evolution of youth drop-in centres from just safe spaces for youth to participate in healthy recreational activities to places in which fun and social work intersect. In the last few years, this has allowed youth social service practitioners to build greater trust and rapport, conduct assessments, and develop interventions that fit individual needs and strengths.
These updates, divided into chapters that include Needs Assessment, Group Work, Casework and Evaluation, build on an earlier guide released in 2011.
The guide also explains the rationale behind why certain changes were made in the hope that it will be used to facilitate reflection and discussions on the current practices among practitioners.
“A Guide to Youth Drop-In Centres” can be downloaded here.
Research Bites is Singapore Children’s Society’s bi-annual research newsletter, which aims to make research findings more accessible to interested members of the public and professionals working with children, youth and families.
Read more here.