The 54^th Annual General Meeting (AGM) took place at the SPD Ability Centre on 25 August 2018.

During the AGM, SPD president Ms Chia Yong Yong shared SPD’s key highlights and achievements for FY2017/2018 in her report to members. These included increased collaborations with mainstream schools and partnerships with public agencies in public education and projects.

We were also able to better equip and care for caregivers through videos and get-together sessions with the help of private sector partners and the use of interactive technology. To heighten assistive technology (AT) awareness, we have started on plans to bring AT to the community in addition to our current AT services sited at Enabling Village.

In her report, Ms Chia highlighted that as part of our strategy to connect, collaborate and convert, we have mobilised organisations and individuals to provide pro-bono support and sponsorship as well as to volunteer their services to and at SPD. These enabled us to initiate the first early intervention conference in Singapore in partnership with other voluntary welfare organisations and government agencies, hold our first virtual run and launch our inaugural charity dinner for both outreach and fundraising. She also emphasised that we would continue to support these efforts via continual improvements in governance, human capital management and structural and operational systems.

Ms Chia acknowledged that the achievements were made possible only with the collaboration and support of our partners, supporters, volunteers and clients.

She shared that Vision 2020, our five-year strategic plan, would continue into the new financial year with an eye on the changing environment, which would see us streamlining and consolidating our functions and looking for more opportunities for growth. We would continue to tap on and grow SPD’s network, such as engaging the community in the Tiong Bahru precinct for greater impact. There would be new and innovative service delivery models.

Efforts to optimise existing resources to serve more clients are ongoing. Parallel with staff development, we would focus on harnessing volunteer resource, scaling up enrolment and capacity in programmes and services. These would be supported by back-end improvements such as better case management systems. We would also be looking at supporting children graduating from its early intervention programmes and helping them in their transition to their next phase of their educational journey.

A minute of silence was observed at the start of the AGM in remembrance of the late Mr K V Veloo, a former SPD Management Committee member and social work pioneer, who passed away on 1 June 2018.

A copy of our FY2017/2018 annual report, which was adopted at the meeting, can be downloaded from our website.